Florida Weighs Allowing Chaplains in Public Schools

The Sunshine State is considering giving students access to chaplains in public schools. On Tuesday, the Florida State Senate’s Appropriations Committee on Education voted to approve Senate Bill 1044, which would allow chaplains to volunteer to offer counseling at public and charter schools.

The text of the bill states, “Each school district or charter school may adopt a policy to authorize volunteer school chaplains to provide supports, services, and programs to students as assigned by the district school board or charter school governing board.” The bill would require volunteer chaplains to pass a background check and would further require school administrators to publicize any chaplain’s religious affiliation and obtain parental consent before a student begins counseling.

Similar bills have been advanced in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas over the past year, facing backlash from Democrats but also some criticism from conservatives and Christians, who fear that the lax requirements around the volunteer chaplain position may allow for atheists, Satanists, and others to present themselves to children as chaplains.

Pastor Jay Johnston, Family Research Council’s chaplain and National Prayer Director, told The Washington Stand, “In speaking with church and ministry leaders about this opportunity to place chaplains in schools, it is suitable from my view if churches who adhere to biblical instruction could commission chaplains and send them to schools — if they have chaplains who know Jesus and have a pastoral heart to minister and bring forth spiritual guidance as they speak life, hope, and encouragement to students, faculty, and parents.”

“However, there is a downside to this,” he continued. “If church and ministry leaders don’t seize the opportunity and chaplains take up positions in schools that are without Christ or associated with a cult, it could give the enemy a foothold and expose the student body to spiritual darkness.”

Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, also commented on the good that school chaplains could achieve. “The specifics of the Florida bill may not be perfect,” she told TWS, “but the need that Florida legislators are seeking to address is very real. As a general matter, as long as the chaplain is actually a pastor who has theological training and ministry experience, I think school chaplains would be a blessing to everyone in the school: students, faculty, staff, and parents.”

However, she also warned, “But when I think of my own public school system where I live, I can easily imagine the approval by school officials of a chaplain in drag, an atheist chaplain, and worse. And that is obviously worse than no chaplain.”

A spokeswoman for the Florida Catholic Conference explained to TWS that although the state’s Catholic bishops have not taken an official stance on the legislation, “We recognize the good that chaplains can do in schools by helping students to address their spiritual and emotional needs. We are pleased that parents will determine the services their children will receive as well in districts that choose to establish chaplaincy programs.”

Reverend James Golden, pastor of Mt. Zion AME Church and the co-founder of Pastors for Florida Children, was among those critical of the bill’s lax qualification requirements. He told lawmakers on Tuesday, “We cannot reduce this important job to somebody who is just able to pass a level two background check.” Golden’s comments echo complaints voiced by a coalition of 100 active chaplains in Texas when the Lone Star State advanced similar legislation last year. In a letter, the chaplains wrote that the Texas bill “allows a school district to give any employee or volunteer who can pass a background check the title of ‘chaplain.’ This is simply not enough. Professional chaplains have specific education and expertise to fulfill our role in helping others engage their own religious practices and traditions.”

The Texas chaplains also wrote, “As trained chaplains, we strongly caution against the government assertion of authority for the spiritual development and formation of our public school children. We would never provide spiritual care to someone without their consent. And when children are involved, parental consent is necessary.” Florida’s new legislation, however, specifically addresses this concern.

The Sunshine State’s bill also addresses another concern raised in Texas last year. The Texas chaplains made it clear, “Because of our training and experience, we know that chaplains are not a replacement for school counselors or safety measures in our public schools… We cooperate with mental health counselors — we do not compete with them.” While the Texas bill specified that “a school district may employ a chaplain instead of a school counselor to perform the duties required of a school counselor” (emphasis added), Florida’s bill does not replace counselors but simply adds chaplains.

Florida Senate Bill 1044 is now being reviewed by the State Senate’s Rules Committee. If approved by the state legislature, it will go into effect July 1.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Henry Blackaby — Experiencing God Face to Face

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

New York Times ‘Journalist’ Accused of Participating In Oct. 7th Hamas Attacks Wins Journalism Award

The New York Times proudly announced last Monday that it had “won three George Polk awards, including two for its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.” Those prestigious journalism awards went to “Samar Abu Elouf and Yousef Masoud of The Times” for “photojournalism for their photographs of the conflict from inside Gaza, capturing the horrific toll of Israel’s airstrikes on civilians, including the death and injury of many children.” The Times neglected to mention, however, one telling detail: Masoud has been unmasked as a member of Hamas who participated in the Oct. 7 jihad massacres inside Israel.

The Paper of Record shows no sign of firing Masoud or returning the George Polk award he won, but the Jerusalem Post had the story on Thursday, noting that the media watchdog Honest Reporting had “highlighted his accreditation to a photo provided to the Associated Press, with the caption, ‘Palestinians wave their national flag and celebrate by a destroyed Israeli tank at the Gaza Strip fence east of Khan Younis southern Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.’ How had Masoud gotten on the scene so quickly, so as to be in a position to take this picture? Honest Reporting “questioned Masoud’s explanation of his presence that he’d been woken up at 5.30 a.m. by rocket fire even though the firing only started an hour later.”

What’s more, “Masoud’s name was included in an investigative report from November showing that journalists from leading news outlets, including The New York Times, AP, Reuters, and CNN, joined Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip on October 7 to document the events with their cameras.” The New York Times responded indignantly: “The accusation that anyone at The New York Times had advance knowledge of the Hamas attacks or accompanied Hamas terrorists during the attacks is untrue and outrageous. It is reckless to make such allegations, putting our journalists on the ground in Israel and Gaza at risk.”

Honest Reporting, however, said that claims it had “jeopardized the safety of all media working in Israel and the Palestinian territories” were nothing more than “a deliberate attempt to deflect from the real issues we raised.” And that’s true. Why doesn’t Masoud explain how he came to be on the scene of a Hamas operation on the morning of Oct. 7, and why he stated that he was awakened by rocket fire an hour before the rocket fire started?

After all, there is nothing remotely implausible about the idea of a New York Times “journalist” being a Hamas operative. Honest Reporting pointed out the Times’ “backing of a decision to rehire Gazan freelance filmmaker Soliman Hijjy despite HonestReporting previously revealing how he had praised Hitler on social media.” What’s more, the Times and the rest of the establishment media have for years been consistently anti-Israel, and have worked assiduously to whitewash the bloody reality of Islamic jihad. Why would the Times, or any other establishment propaganda arm, hesitate to hire a supporter of Hamas and fanatical hater of Israel and Jews? Media observer Hugh Fitzgerald states that “save for a single columnist — Bret Stephens — the New York Times has no one on its staff, among its hundreds of reporters, columnists, and op/ed contributors, who could be described as willing to give Israel a fair shake.”

We have just recently discovered how closely the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) collaborated with Hamas, allowing the jihadis to operate on UNRWA premises, employing Hamas operatives, and teaching hatred of Jews and Israel in its textbooks for Palestinian schools. If this could happen before the eyes of a watching world, what would possibly prevent a “journalist” from a deeply biased and essentially pro-Hamas outlet from going whole hog with his support for the jihad terror outfit?

The New York Times has a great deal to answer for, far beyond Yousef Masoud. Masoud may indeed have been a Hamas jihadi, in which case his George Polk award should be rescinded and the Times should not use him again. But the fact that none of that is likely to happen is in large part a result of the Times’ indefatigable efforts to make support for jihad violence respectable and mainstream. The Times should at this point perform a thoroughgoing soul-searching, and a wholesale reevaluation of its uncritical support for jihadis. But nothing is much less likely.

AUTHOR

RELATED ARTICLES:

Yet Another Muslim Journalist Working for The New York Times Praises Hitler

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CHAPTER 7: Politicized Education—Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier—Reality Is

Globalism is a replacement ideology that seeks to reorder the world into one singular, planetary Unistate, ruled by the globalist elite themselves. The globalist war on nation-states cannot succeed without collapsing the United States of America. The long-term strategic attack plan moves America incrementally from constitutional republic to socialism to globalism to feudalism. The tactical attack plan uses asymmetric psychological and informational warfare to destabilize Americans and drive society out of objective reality into the madness of subjective reality. America’s children are the primary target of the globalist predators.


The three pillars of faith, family, and flag were established as the infrastructure of freedom in the United States of America. Our Founding Fathers recognized the importance of an educated citizenry for sustaining ordered liberty in our constitutional republic. The infrastructure and moral tenets in American culture were derived from both the Bible and the Judeo-Christian tradition our Founding Fathers embraced.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. —John Adams to Massachusetts Militia, 11 October 1798

Our Founding Fathers recognized literacy as the cornerstone of critical thinking and the transfer of information. They knew that an educated, moral, responsible adult citizenry was necessary to sustain and grow our fledgling nation.

Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country. —Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district—all studied and appreciated as they merit—are the principal support of virtue, morality, and civil liberty. —Benjamin Franklin, Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States (ed. 1864)

It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country. ––Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

Reading remains the most fundamental skill required to preserve and protect our constitutional republic. The enemies of freedom targeted American education tactically, to undermine literacy in order to achieve an unaware and compliant citizenry decades before that infamous phrase was associated with John Podesta and Hillary Clinton. Children were always the strategic target because they are the future of America.

Industrialists John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie were major influences in the evolution of American education. Teachers College at Columbia University was endowed with $500,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1902. In that same year John D. Rockefeller created the General Education Board (GEB) with a gift of $1 million. The GEB provided funding and influence to shape American schooling. Rockefeller is quoted as saying, “I don’t want a nation of thinkers; I want a nation of workers.” Education was being recalibrated to emphasize vocationalism, to produce future factory workers for industrialists’ needs. The GEB was subsumed by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1960.

The idea of mandatory education in the United States was embraced and promoted by steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie advocated for a teacher certification system, and donated millions of dollars to establish libraries and universities across the country. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching[i] (CFAT) was originally established as the Carnegie Foundation with a $10 million gift by Andrew Carnegie in 1905, “as an independent policy and research center called to ‘do and perform all things necessary to encourage, uphold, and dignify the profession of the teacher and the cause of higher education.'” (Carnegie Foundation History)

Since its inception, CFAT has had a powerful influence on American education, particularly in its efforts at quantifying and standardizing education. In 1906 it introduced the Carnegie Unit, a measurement of education credits required for high school curriculum and graduation requirements. The CFAT pension program, which became an independent nonprofit organization called Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association[ii] (TIAA) in 1914, was linked to participation in curriculums using the Carnegie Unit in high schools for graduation, and to colleges and universities for admission.

A 2015 CFAT study authored by Elena Silva, Taylor White, and Thomas Toch, “The Carnegie Unit: A Century-old Standard in a Changing Educational Landscape,”[iii] discusses the history and future of the Carnegie Unit. From the report:

The Carnegie Unit and the Credit Hour (p. 8)

The standard Carnegie Unit is defined as 120 hours of contact time with an instructor, which translates into one hour of instruction on a particular subject per day, five days a week, for twenty-four weeks annually. Most public high schools award credit based on this 120-hour standard (one credit for a course that lasts all year; or half a credit for a semester course). And, while state and district coursework requirements for graduation vary, most states require a minimum number of units, typically expressed as “Carnegie Units.” A typical high school student earns six to seven credits per year over a four-year program of high school.

In higher education, students receive “credit hours,” a metric derived from the Carnegie Unit and based on the number of “contact hours” students spend in class per week in a given semester. A typical three-credit course, for example, meets for three hours per week over a fifteen-week semester. A student, then, might earn fifteen credit hours per semester (fifteen is standard full-time registration for a semester, thirty for an academic year) en route to a four-year bachelor’s degree requiring a total of 120 credits.

The report recommended replacing the Carnegie Unit with a system of Outcome-Based Education (OBE). Popularized in the 1990s, OBE is an educational theory that rejects traditional content-based learning that emphasizes rote learning and acquisition of foundational knowledge, and bases the educational system instead on personal pre-determined goals called outcomes. It is the quintessential shift from the WHAT of education to the WHO.

Marketed as deeply personalized, empowering, and student-centric, OBE rejects traditional education as old-fashioned, limiting, and educator-centric. In OBE teachers are facilitators, not educators with authority or expertise. The student-centric focus is not on individual academic achievement, but rather on student social interactions and cooperativelearning experiences.

This seismic shift from traditional to outcome-based education marked the institutional shift of American education from the education our founders envisioned to social activism where outcomes, results, performances, competencies, and standards could all be evaluated with a politicized metric. Outcome-Based Education was the chosen vehicle for social change through education, which was now being used to emphasize political activism and produce anti-American Americans for globalists’ needs.

The 2015 study indicated that one of the biggest obstacles to shifting from the Carnegie Unit to Outcome-Based Education (OBE) was federal financing:

But efforts to further push the boundaries of the design and delivery of higher education face a substantial barrier: the federal government’s requirement that most students taking part in the $150 billion federal financial aid program attend colleges or universities using Carnegie Units. (“The Carnegie Unit,” p. 25)

The Obama administration was committed to OBE, so it proposed changes to the federal funding model that included other criteria besides the Carnegie Unit:

To promote competency models in higher education, the Obama administration has endorsed a provision in the federal financial aid regulations that extends eligibility under the program to students at institutions that use “projects, papers, examinations, presentations, performances, portfolios” and other “direct” measures of learning “in lieu of credit hours or clock hours” to gauge student performance. It initially extended “direct assessment” privileges to two institutions, Capella University, a for-profit online provider, and Southern New Hampshire University’s College for America. The University of Wisconsin’s Flexible Option, which is led by UW–Extension, received approval for direct assessment in August 2014. (“The Carnegie Unit,” p. 25)

The Carnegie Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching have politicized American education and abandoned their founding missions. The 2015 CFAT Executive Summary states unequivocally that the Carnegie Unit must be replaced in order to facilitate “solutions” sought by reformers. It is political reform disguised as educational reform:

The Carnegie Foundation is committed to making American education more effective, more equitable, and more efficient at this critical junction in the nation’s history. We share change advocates’ goals of bringing greater transparency and flexibility to the design and delivery of K–12 and higher education in pursuit of deeper learning for more students. After studying the Carnegie Unit’s relationship to today’s reforms, we have concluded that American education’s reliance on the Carnegie Unit is an impediment to some of the solutions sought by reformers. Most notably, the federal government’s financial aid rules requiring colleges and universities to measure student progress using Carnegie Units are a barrier to the spread of flexible delivery models in higher education. (“The Carnegie Unit,” p. 5)

Changing the metrics of education from the Carnegie Unit to OBE weaponized American education, transforming it from its colonial purpose of literacy and support of Americanism to being the political agent for massive social change.

CFAT’s current Mission Statement:[iv]

The mission of the Carnegie Foundation is to catalyze transformational change in education so that every student has the opportunity to live a healthy, dignified, and fulfilling life.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching was chartered by an act of Congress in 1906. Since then, it has pioneered a broad range of transformative advancements in K–12 and higher education, including the creation of the Carnegie Unit; TIAA; standards for schools of law, medicine, education, and engineering; Educational Testing Service; the GRE; Pell Grants; the Carnegie Classifications; the U.S. Department of Education; and the use of improvement science to build the field’s capacity to improve.

Today, the Carnegie Foundation has set its sights on tackling the nation’s most significant educational challenge: achieving educational equity for Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian and Pacific Islander, and first-generation students, as well as those from low-income households. Carnegie will leverage its expertise, assets, partnerships, convening power, and social and reputational capital to address longstanding educational inequities that impede economic mobility and exacerbate racial inequality.

Historically, public education supported upward mobility and the middle class through education focused on teaching basic skills and fundamental knowledge. The politicization of American education shifted the ideological focus from meritocracy’s equal opportunity to socialism’s equal outcome. It was a seismic shift in both form and content in American education.

We are feeling the aftershocks of this earthquake today. The introduction of racist Critical Race Theory, the staggering increase in functional illiteracy, the profoundly disturbing introduction of pornographic sex education—all are derivatives of the changed purpose of America’s education industry.

Journalist and educational reformer Alex Newman explores the subject in his September 13, 2023, article, “Lesbian-Marxist US Library Boss: School & Libraries for ‘Socialist Organizing’.”[v] Newman writes:

Government schools and local libraries should be used for “socialist organizing,” the self-proclaimed “Marxist lesbian” chief of the American Library Association (ALA) proclaimed at a major socialism conference last week. The library boss has also become notorious recently for hating on parents, families, Christians and anyone else who stands in the way of indoctrinating children.

Speaking after a panel at the Socialism 2023 conference in Chicago organized by a coalition of revolutionaries advocating for the “right” of children to engage in prostitution, among other absurdities, ALA chief Emily Drabinski did not hold back. “Public education needs to be a site of socialist organizing,” she told attendees…. Among other topics, the panel at which Drabinski spoke out included discussion on how teachers could indoctrinate children with Critical Race Theory propaganda, even in jurisdictions that have banned it. “We need to be on the agenda of socialist organizing,” added Drabinski…. The socialism event in Chicago, which featured the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as a supporter, featured panels on abolishing the family and replacing it with government, as well as “best practices for developing socialist programming for kids.”…

“Ms. Drabinski is a supporter of Critical Race Theory, which Montana rejected as discriminatory, and other far-left-leaning ideologies that have no place in our schools and libraries,” said Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen. “By electing a declared Marxist as their President, the ALA has not only turned its back on families, parental rights, and American values—it has turned its back on America itself.”

Taxpayer funds are being weaponized to foment a revolution against the very taxpayers coerced into footing the bill for this dangerous extremism. It is time for all library systems to leave the ALA and for government schools turning children into Marxist revolutionaries to be shut down. The future of America is on the line.

Today’s American education industry is in direct opposition to our Founding Fathers, who understood that an educated citizenry is required for sustaining ordered liberty in our constitutional republic. The American education industry is now the instrument for anti-American propaganda and Marxist indoctrination. Parents can no longer trust their children’s education to it.

SOURCES:

[i] Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

[ii] Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association

[iii] The Carnegie Unit: A Century-old Standard in a Changing Educational Landscape

[iv] Mission Statement

[v] Lesbian-Marxist US Library Boss: School & Libraries for ‘Socialist Organizing’

©2024. Linda Goudsmit. All rights reserved.

Please visit my Pundicity page: goudsmit.pundicity.com and website: lindagoudsmit.com

Where is George Washington?

When I was a child going to school we studied the Presidents. We played a game with coins and each president had a coin. We were told a story and asked questions and had to attribute each question to a president . The one with the most coin was the winner and got an ice cream.

My favorite story was from George Washington.  ”The cherry tree myth is one of the oldest and best-known legends about George Washington. In the original story, when Washington was six years old, he received a hatchet as a gift and damaged his father’s cherry tree with it. When his father discovered what George had done, he became angry. Young George bravely said, “I cannot tell a lie…I did cut it with my hatchet.” Washington’s father embraced him and declared that his son’s honesty was worth more than a thousand trees.

The first time I heard Obama talk and lie, about spying or Obamacare, Fast and Furious, etc. I realized, they all lie. All the Presidents lie. So where does that leave us. Who do we believe? The media picks and chooses what lie they will report on making its about equal.  The media is bias and will over report the GOP and under report the DNC.

The saddest part to me is: How do we teach our children to tell the truth if their leaders are lying?  Today this generation of children grow up with no heroes except animated characters that they see on the big screen. Where do they go to learn telling the truth is the greatest virtue they can possess?

The family was supposed to teach virtue.  The church was supposed to assist in morality.  American values were to be the finishing touches.  All of that is gone now as the schools no longer teach history. no longer teach truth.  Facts are unimportant and the one with the biggest wallet is the winner. It no longer matters if you lie cheat or steal to get what you want as long as you get it. Today we are petrified if the Speaker of the House or a football team prays before a meeting or event.  We are losing our country because of the lies. The Globalists although smaller in number can cause so much chaos by lying that the misinformed uneducated people will turn on each other and beg the same people who created the chaos for help.

“When people become educated, you can’t control them. You can’t frighten them. People who are educated know their own power and don’t surrender it to others.” Jordan Maxwell

Get your kids out of government schools. Tell your local official to stop taking government grants.  Vet your candidates and look for George Washington.

Contrary to popular belief, George Washington did not buy slaves. He inherited them. At that time in history, there were no big machines to manage farms and slavery was the method used. This had been going on for hundreds of years as the loser of any war became the slave of the winner.

The following quotes are from George Washington via William Federer as we celebrate President Washington’s Birthday. I believe if President Washington was with us today he would say the same thing.

On July 2, 1776, from his Head Quarters in New York, General Washington issued his General Orders:

“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army.  Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore to resolve to conquer or die …”

In Washington’s Farewell Address, he warned us about Political Parties: However combinations or Associations of the above description may now & then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People, & to usurp for themselves the reins of Government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

You can find more on the history of President Washington by reading the thoughts in his Farewell Address or listening to Bill Federer on the Prism of America’s Education show today.

Today we will also discuss our health. Americans are not taking care of their health issues and things are about to get worse. Most of our drugs come from CCP-China.  What if those drugs were withheld or worse yet, what about a Cyber attack.  I believe you can only handle the stress of life if your foundation is strong. Your body is your foundation. No one will take care of it if you don’t. Listen to Robert Scott Bell

Remember: 

Everything is connected. Nothing is random, Everything has a plan. All plans are lies. All Globalists want is MONEY, POWER, CONTROL Don’t give them yours. Challenge them with the truth. Doing Nothing is affirmation. Share with your 5.

So join me today

©2024. Karen Schoen. All rights reserved.

Show Link: https://www.americaoutloud.news/the-prism-of-americas-education/

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‘Desperate’ for Votes: Biden Expands Student Loan Forgiveness by $1.2 Billion

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced a new round of federal student loan debt forgiveness, in which almost 153,000 borrowers will have their loans forgiven at a cost of $1.2 billion to American taxpayers under what the White House has termed the SAVE program. Since Biden took office, he has now canceled over $131 billion of student loan debt. Experts say the policy, which will further deepen the over $34 trillion national debt, is a “desperate” attempt to garner the votes of young college students.

In a social media post on Wednesday, Biden indicated that his administration’s effort to cancel student loan debt is far from over, stating that “we’re pushing to relieve more.” As Penn Wharton estimated last July, the SAVE program is projected to cost “$475 billion over the 10-year budget window.”

The administration’s latest announcement is further proof that Biden is undeterred by the Supreme Court’s decision last June which struck down the administration’s plan to cancel up to $400 billion in student loans held by as many as 43 million people, finding that the HEROS Act of 2003 did not give the Secretary of Education the authority to forgive student loans, as the administration tried to claim. Following the decision, Biden stated, “I will stop at nothing to find other ways” to cancel student loans. Last week, Biden further boasted of ignoring the nation’s highest court regarding student loan forgiveness. “The Supreme Court blocked it,” he said. “But that didn’t stop me.”

Legal experts say that Biden’s latest loan cancellation is unconstitutional. “Despite the Supreme Court clearly saying that under our constitution the president cannot rewrite our nation’s laws, President Biden continues to do just that,” Karen Harned, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Responsibility, told National Review. “With this latest Executive Order forgiving over $1 billion in student loans, the President is once again breaking the law in a transparent attempt to garner votes.”

Observers are also noting that Biden’s policy clearly favors college graduates — one of the most privileged classes of Americans — over those who are less fortunate. “Per the Pew Research Center, there exists ‘a growing earnings gap between young college graduates and their counterparts without degrees,’ and that gap only ‘widened as a result of the coronavirus pandemic,’” wrote the editors at NRO on Thursday. “College graduates have better employment prospectsbetter health outcomes, and lower divorce rates than everyone else. Despite this, the federal government chose to spend around a quarter of a trillion dollars during the pandemic on an unnecessary pause in student-loan repayments. Now it wants to double that number with an amnesty?”

NRO’s Charles Cooke further pointed out that Biden’s student loan policy does not address the underlying issues that have caused Americans to amass billions in student loan debt. “This isn’t alms for the poor; it’s a brazen cash-grab by Joe Biden’s friends. … There’s no principle here; the debts owed by others remain untouched. There’s no reform here; the education system remains exactly as it was before this started.”

Others say that the move boils down to a frantic attempt by a president with historically low approval ratings to capture more votes in November’s election.

“President Biden knows how deeply unpopular he is with young voters and his base, and his student debt plan is a desperate attempt to win them back on the taxpayer’s dime,” Sentinel Action Fund President Jessica Anderson said Wednesday. “Biden hopes that wiping away some student loan debt will make voters forget that he is responsible for record-high inflation, rising food prices, and our stagnant economy. Americans won’t be fooled by Biden’s latest campaign stunt.”

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are echoing these sentiments. “He unilaterally is forgiving this debt, supposedly forgiving, which means he doesn’t care what the law says — Congress,” Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) commented on “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Thursday. “He doesn’t care what the judiciary says — the Supreme Court. [A]nd yes, of course he’s buying votes. But the rest of the taxpayers, there is no forgiveness [for them]. Someone is going to pay these loans back, and now it’s going to be you, the taxpayer.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.


he Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Jew-Hating Queens College Muslim Student Association to Host Speaker Who Accused Israel of Creating ISIS and Involvement In 9/11, Jews of Pedophilia

Nothing new here.

Muslims and leftists bring the most abhorrent, anti-human, vicious demons to speak as a matter of course.

What does bear pointing out is, on the rare occasion that when supporters of Israel, Conservative leaders, voices of freedom are extended an invitation all hell breaks loose and they are inevitably canceled.

There is no freedom in this once free country and we are living under the boot a most brutal and vicious thugocracy.

“Jews of pedophilia” this from a ‘religion’ whose prophet, the ‘perfect example’, married his favorite bride Aisha at the tender age of six which is why child marriage is rampant in Islam.

I won’t even dignify the Islamic State or 9/11 blood libel against the Jews.

Queens College Muslim Student Association to Host Event with Speaker Who Accused Israel of Creating ISIS and Involvement In 9/11, Jews of Pedophilia

By Zach Kessel, JNS, February 21, 2024:

The Muslim Student Association at Queens College, a public institution under the City University of New York (CUNY) system, plans to host an event on February 29 titled “Analyzing the Israel-Palestine Conflict: A Multifaceted Examination.”

Their featured speaker at the discussion is an author named Daniel Haqiqatjou, a writer at a website called Muslim Skeptic and the author of the book “The Modernist Menace to Islam.” According to his bio, he attended Harvard University for his undergraduate studies and then earned a master’s degree in philosophy at Tufts University.

Haqiqatjou, as is often the case with guests invited to address Israel and the ongoing war against Hamas, has a history of publishing antisemitic conspiracy theories.

His most recent article at Muslim Skeptic is titled “Is ISIS Jewish?” and argues that “ISIS acts in keeping with the Jewish law of war,” which “is why ISIS encourages random individuals to constantly burst into churches and even mosques, then kill the innocent men, women, and children there by [sic] shooting or bombing (like the recent church attack in Turkey).”

He says that “the most likely explanation for ISIS’s behavior is that it is run by Israel,” but even if it is not, it has adopted “the type of disgusting tactics approved of in Judaism.”

Haqiqatjou has also written about his belief that “Judaism is perhaps the world’s most racist religion” and that “owing to the influence of Judaism, Israel is one of the most racist states in the world.”

To prove this claim, Haqiqatjou pointed to a passage in the Talmud — which even the most advanced Jewish scholars spend their lifetimes studying — that he contends “says that blacks, due to their inferiority, are not allowed to fully participate in sacred worship.” Haqiqatjou is not a Talmudic scholar, and there is no evidence available to suggest that he has ever engaged in the study of the texts.

In another piece, Haqiqatjou bemoaned a supposed state of affairs in which “researchers who make claims about” World War II and the Holocaust “which might provoke criticism of Jews” find themselves suffering “career setbacks.” He stated his opinion that “it is not permitted to conduct research on the possibility of Jewish human sacrifice rituals” and accused Jews of controlling academia to the extent that no criticism of Jews or Israel can be published.

Haqiqatjou has claimed that Israel and India are working together to commit genocide against Muslims and that “the powerful Israel lobby has . . . successfully pushed the U.S. government into adopting” a plan to eradicate Islam. He wrote that the Jewish holiday of Purim — a celebration of an instance in which a plot to eliminate Jews in the Achaemenid Empire was thwarted — is, in fact, a remembrance of Jews’ “continuing duty to genocide their enemies in all times and all places.”

On his X account, Haqiqatjou has argued that “Judaism has developed a special hatred for Christianity and Islam.” In the immediate aftermath of October 7, he supported Hamas’s barbarism, writing that “Palestine has the right to defend itself from terrorists” and criticized Mehdi Hasan as being a “complete zionist shill” because he condemned Hamas’s taking children hostage. He has baselessly accused Israel of stealing Palestinian organs. He has also reposted those who claim Israel was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks and said himself that he believes Al Qaeda was “gradually infiltrated over time” by Israel.

Continue reading.

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Students for Justice in Palestine at Claremont Colleges Think They Just got a BDS Win. But did they?

  • On February 11, 2024, the Pitzer College Student Senate voted to suspend Pitzer’s study abroad partnership with the University of Haifa in Israel. The resolution was spearheaded by Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). Pitzer College is one of the seven Claremont Colleges in Claremont, California.
  • Since 2018, Claremont SJP has been trying to pass this initiative. However, the response by Pitzer’s president was swift and decisive. In a statement, Pitzer said, the “Student Senate does not speak for the College, nor does it represent the views of all Pitzer students. The president will not accept…any resolution antithetical to [the principles of academic freedom and safe and productive learning].”
  • Claremont SJP has a long history of supporting terrorists, calling for Israel’s destruction and rejecting dialogue. The group regularly promotes anti-Israel agitators and initiates campaigns for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

KEY FINDINGS

Claremont SJP and JVP spearheaded the ‘Suspend Pitzer Haifa’ initiative, resulting in the Pitzer College Student Senate voting to suspend the college’s study-abroad partnership with the University of Haifa in Israel.

This BDS campaign is a continuation of an initiative that began in 2018.

Daniel Segal, the faculty advisor for SJP, played a key role in both the 2018 and 2024 campaigns to suspend the Haifa partnership, acting as a link between the two efforts.

On October 7th, the same day as the massacre committed by Hamas in Israel, Segal posted on X (formerly Twitter) justifying the attack with the following statement: “Israeli state apartheid, ethnic cleansing & settler colonialism are ongoing violence against Palestinians; some of the resistance provoked is violent also. All who support the oppression, all who oppose non-violent BDS, have more blood on their hands today. #PalestinianFreedom.”

Claremont SJP and JVP act as two campus groups united under the same banner and have collaborated on events as far back as 2015.

On October 8th, one day after the brutal Hamas attack, Claremont SJP and JVP issued a joint statement blaming Israel for all bloodshed and expressing support for resistance and intifada.

Malak Afaneh, a prominent figure in the 2018-2019 ‘Suspend Pitzer Haifa’ campaign, later attended Berkeley Law, where she served as president of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter. During her tenure, the SJP chapter notably drafted a bylaw to exclude Zionist voices from campus.

Lea Kayali, another key player from the 2018-2019 ‘Suspend Pitzer Haifa’ campaign, is now an organizer with Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine (HLS Justice for Palestine), one of the groups that signed the October 2023 anti-Israel statement. This statement, endorsed by over 30 Harvard student groups, held Israel entirely responsible for the violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th.

SEE BELOW CLAREMONT SJP HISTORY OF EXTREMISM AND TERROR SUPPORT

JUSTIFYING HAMAS ATROCITIES

The day after Hamas’ October 7, 2023 massacre of 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of 250 more, Claremont SJP and JVP issued a joint statement in support of Hamas, which praised “decolonization” (read: murder), Palestinian “resistance” and violent uprising (intifada). This statement justified the Hamas attack, placing all the blame and loss of life squarely on Israel’s shoulders.

The statement read in part:

Before October 7, Claremont SJP activities in 2023 centered around the re-launch of their campaign against Pitzer to suspend its exchange program with the University of Haifa in Israel.

In addition, the group strategized how they could prevent the Claremont student government from adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

The definition includes singling out Israel and holding it to a different standard than other countries of the world vis-a-vis boycotts (a feature of the BDS movement).

Claremont SJP also pushed the lie that Israel was harming Black and Brown communities in Los Angeles by training the Los Angeles police department in repressive surveillance techniques.

2022

In 2022, Claremont SJP participated in a car caravan protest in response to false charges against Israel of “ethnic cleansing” neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Hebron and the Negev region.

The group also held a “Free Palestine” Week and ended the year with a letter-writing event to “show solidarity and build morale” for the “Holy Land 5.” The Holy Land 5 refers to the five individuals who worked for the Holy Land Foundation in Texas and were convicted of funneling money to Hamas in the largest terror financing case in American history. Three of the men are still in prison serving their sentences.

2021

SUPPORTING TERRORISTS

In May 2021, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists fired over 4,300 rockets from Gaza at major population centers in Israel.

Israel responded by launching “Operation Guardian of the Walls (OGW),” carrying out targeted military strikes in Gaza.

During the conflict, Claremont SJP advertised two marches organized in solidarity with the “Palestinian Uprising and General Strike.” The first, held on May 15, 2021, was billed as an “LA Rally & Protest for Resistance Until Liberation!”

The second, on May 18, 2021, was held in front of the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles.

As of December 2021, Claremont SJP’s signature was on a petition calling the “Palestinian Students Solidarity Campaign” that was launched by the anti-Israel NGO Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network (Samidoun).

The petition supports Palestinian students detained or incarcerated by Israel for participating in direct terror activity or terror-related activities.

Samidoun advocates for the release of all Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are members of Hamas or other terror groups like the PFLP. Multiple Samidoun activists have been identified as PFLP members, including Mohammed Khatib, Samidoun’s European coordinator.

On March 26, 2021, Claremont SJP posted to Facebook an event page for an online panel titled “Free Them All!” that featured Khatib. The event page said speakers would discuss “the importance of supporting and organizing for the freedom of political prisoners as part of the Palestinian national liberation struggle.”

CALLING FOR ISRAEL’S DESTRUCTION

As of December 2021, Claremont SJP’s platform referred to Israel as an “apartheid state…that can only be dismantled through Palestinian national liberation.”

As of the same date, Claremont SJP’s Instagram bio read: “Fighting for Palestinian liberation, from the river to the sea.” The same quote reportedly appeared in the Instagram bio as early as February 2020.

“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” is a chant used [00:02:52] to call for the elimination of the State of Israel. It has also been employed by Hamas leader Khaled Mashal to call for the replacement of Israel with an Islamic state.

The text on a September 21, 2021 advertisement for Claremont SJP for the colleges’ 5C club fair read, “Join Claremont SJP to fight for the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.”

HOSTING A TERRORIST SUPPORTER

On November 18, 2021, Claremont SJP hosted an event titled “A Conversation with Mohammed El-Kurd,” who has glorified terrorists, spread incitement against Israel and whitewashed Hamas. El-Kurd has also spread hatred about America and the police and conspiracy theories about Israel.

He has spread misinformation about Israel in interviews on CNN and MSNBC as well as social media. The event advertisement called El-Kurd a “Palestinian activist and poet.”

El-Kurd’s talk was also sponsored also by the Departments of International Relations, Religious Studies and English at Pomona College as well as the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC), Pomona’s student government; McKenna’s student government, The Associated Students of Claremont McKenna College (ASCMC); and the 5C Prison Abolition Collective.

DEMONIZING ISRAEL

During the May 2021 conflict in Israel, Claremont SJP advertised on Instagram a rally in Chicago, calling out all their “Chicago friends” to attend the rally to “Stand against Israeli land theft” and “Stand with the people of Sheikh Jarrah.”

In May of 2021, a property dispute in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah erupted into violence in anticipation of an Israel High Court hearing that was expected to rule on eviction proceedings. The dispute involved over 70 Palestinian tenants illegally residing in Jewish-owned properties. On May 9, 2021, the court postponed the hearing.

The Sheikh Jarrah dispute sparked violent clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli security forces in and around the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount.

Incitement surrounding Al Aqsa and Sheikh Jarrah were leading factors in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists firing over 4,300 rockets from Gaza at Israeli population centers on May 10-21, 2021. Israel responded by launching OGW, carrying out targeted military strikes against the terrorists and their infrastructure in Gaza.

REJECTING DIALOGUE

As of December 2021, Claremont SJP’s platform read: “We reject any and all collaboration, dialogue, and coalition work with Zionist organizations through a strict policy of anti-normalization and encourage our comrades in other organizations to do the same.”

Proponents of the “anti-normalization” policy seek to police all interactions between Israelis and Palestinians and shut down all conversations, interactions and speech that they perceive as being ideologically unaligned with their own agenda. Adherents to this position reject “liberal Zionist” groups who seek to dialogue with Palestinians on the grounds that such interaction “normalizes” entrenched power dynamics.

This policy was originally dictated by the BDS National Committee (BNC), which listed as one of its “main activities” the “Monitoring & Rapid Response” against interactions that recognize or cooperate with “Israel’s regime.”

CAMPAIGNING FOR BDS

On April 15, 2021, Claremont SJP and 5C Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) introduced a resolution to the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) Senate that mandated ASPC compliance with BDS.

The resolution was titled [p.1], “Banning the Use of ASPC Funding to Support the Occupation of Palestine” and it required [p.2] that ASPC “internal spending” could not be used on products or services from companies that “knowingly support the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”

ASPC internal spending includes multiple items including funding 5C student clubs and student-run events.

The resolution also created [p.2] an oversight role for Claremont SJP over the ASPC-run Coop Store and the Coop Fountain restaurant. According to the resolution, ASPC would “work in tandem with members of SJP, and other pertinent parties, to perform an annual check on the ASPC’s businesses to ensure all goods sold adhere to the guidelines outlined in this resolution.”

The resolution stated [p.2] that: “Clubs that fail to divest and/or refrain from such uses of funding would face the loss of all Claremont Colleges Student Government Association funds.”

Claremont Colleges pool mandatory student activity fees and distribute the money to the 5C student governments. ASPC provides almost 47% of the funding for all 5C clubs, although each 5C student government can fund 5C clubs.

The above clause effectively mandated BDS compliance for pro-Israel and Jewish student organizations like Claremont Hillel and Claremont Chabad.

In the spring of 2021, ASPC gave more than $10,000 to 5C clubs. It also gave $30,000 for student-run events at Pomona that were coordinated through the ASPC’s Pomona Events Committee (PEC). The full ASPC spring 2021 budget was $216,700.

The Claremont SJP and Claremont JVP resolution also said [p.2] that ASPC’s “end goal” would be to lead other 5C student governments to pass similar BDS resolutions.

On April 22, 2021, the ASPC Senate passed the resolution with a vote of 10-0-0. Five senators were not present, representing one-third of the ASPC Senate’s 15 seats.

The same day, Claremont SJP issued a press release calling the resolution’s passage “an important first step in reducing our complicity with a country that maintains an illegal military occupation and regularly commits crimes against humanity against the indigenous Palestinian population.”

On April 23, 2021, following criticism of the resolution reportedly among campus and national Jewish groups, Pomona President G. Gabrielle Starr sent an email to the student body opposing the resolution. Starr said that requiring student clubs to boycott Israel was “deeply concerning.” She said that since the vote “was held without representation from any student opposition,” the ASPC Senate should “reverse course and allow for full discussion.”

On April 29, 2021, the ASPC Senate held a Zoom meeting that included a “comment period” for student senators and student guest speakers to express their feedback on the resolution.

On April 30, 2021, the ASPC Senate reportedly decided to “table the resolution” for further discussion in regards to the resolution’s call to deny funding to student clubs that failed to adhere to BDS.

On May 6, 2021, the ASPC Senate reportedly passed a modified resolution that omitted the original clause forcing student clubs funded by ASPC to comply with BDS.

The final resolution mandated BDS compliance for internal ASPC spending, PEC-coordinated events and the two ASPC-managed businesses. Claremont SJP was also granted the oversight role regarding the compliance of ASPC businesses with the resolution.

2019

DEMONIZING ISRAEL

On April 2, 2019, Claremont SJP hosted an event titled, “The Washings: Pinkwashing, Greenwashing, and Faithwashing,” as part of Palestinian Freedom Weeks 2019 (PFW 2019) which was held on campus from March 25-April 7, 2019)

The Facebook event page accused Israel of “settler colonialism” and also said: “The Washing Campaign has been fundamental in sustaining Israeli apartheid by way of presenting Israel as a progressive entity in an effort to deflect from state-sanctioned crimes against Palestine.”

“Pinkwashing” is a claim used by anti-Israel activists to argue that Israel manipulates the LGBTQ community in order to garner support for Israel.

“Greenwashing” is a claim that Israel advocates manipulate the environmentalist community in order to garner support for Israel.
“Faithwashing” is an accusation that supporters of Israel engage in interfaith dialogue to promote a pro-Zionist agenda.

On March 27, 2019, Claremont SJP hosted another PFW 2019 event titled “Open Air & Cages: Prison Abolition from Attica to Gaza.” The event’s Facebook page called the United States and Israel “white supremacist and settler colonial projects.”

The same event page also said: “This event will work through the solidarity pacts of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Black Panther party who attempted to draw ‘comparisons between racial capitalism in the United States and Israel …’”

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was declared a foreign terrorist organization by the United States in 1987. The group’s 1968 charter stated that its goal was the “liberation of Palestine” through “armed struggle.”

Yasser Arafat, who was known as the “father of modern terrorism,” was the leader of the PLO from 1969 until his ddeath in 20014.

The Black Panther Party (BPP) was a revolutionary Marxist political organization founded in 1966. The party advocated the use of violence and guerilla tactics to overthrow the U.S. government. BPP members were involved in a number of fatal firefights with police.

On March 25, 2019, Claremont SJP hosted an event titled, “Visit the Mock Apartheid Wall,” where they built a wall on campus meant to simulate Israel’s security barrier.

Israel’s security barrier, 97% of which is a low chain-link barrier, was built as a deterrent to Palestinian terror attacks. The concrete portions of the fence were built in response to Palestinian sniper attacks.

The event’s Facebook page read, “The Wall is an extension of Israel’s policies of land theft and ethnic cleansing.” The page also said, “We especially want to bring attention between the connections between the construction of the Apartheid Wall in Palestine and other similar racist, oppressive projects of border militarization around the world.”

PROMOTING ANTI-ISRAEL AGITATORS

On November 14, 2019, Claremont SJP hosted a film screening of “Gaza Fights for Freedom,” featuring anti-Israel activists Abby Martin, the film’s director, and her husband, Mike Prysner, a journalist.

Martin is a former anchor for the Russian state news agency RT and the Venezuelan state news agency Telasur. She has compared [00:00:13] Israel to Nazi Germany and spread anti-Israel propaganda. Prysner has defended terrorism and has referred to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as the “Apartheid Defense Forces.”

During the event, Martin reportedly “defended Hamas and placed sole blame on Israel for the lack of peace between both states.”

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the European Union, Canada, Australia, the United States and Israel.

Also at the Claremont SJP event, Martin reportedly accused a Jewish student journalist of being “associated with ‘white nationalists.’” Prysner called Israel an “attack dog” of the United States.

CAMPAIGNING FOR BDS

Beginning in 2018 and culminating in 2019, Claremont SJP was involved in a push to boycott Pitzer College’s exchange program with Israel’s Haifa University.

The events transpired as follows:

On November 8, 2018, Pitzer College faculty reportedly voted for a motion to suspend the exchange program which Pitzer had run since 2007. Professor Daniel Segal, the Claremont SJP and Claremont JVP faculty advisor, led the boycott campaign.

The faculty motion was a non-binding recommendation to Pitzer President Melvin L. Oliver. The motion called for the “suspension of the College’s exchange with Haifa University, until (a) the Israeli state ends its restrictions on entry to Israel based on ancestry and/or political speech and (b) the Israeli state adopts policies granting visas for exchanges to Palestinian universities on a fully equal basis as it does to Israeli universities.”

After the faculty vote, the motion was then sent to the Pitzer College Council (PCC), Pitzer’s “primary legislative body” which “votes on policy recommendations forwarded by the faculty as well as committees.” The PCC includes faculty and student senators who issue recommendations to the Pitzer president. The president is then free to approve or disapprove the recommendations.

On November 18, 2018, Claremont SJP issued a statement supporting the pro-BDS faculty vote, saying that it was “imperative” to end the “deeply problematic” Haifa program. Claremont SJP also circulated a petition to the public titled, “No Academic Freedom Under Occupation,” which accused Israel of having “increasingly draconian policies” and employing a “systemic practice of racial discrimination.”

On November 29, 2018, President Oliver responded to the faculty recommendation, opposing it and calling it a “repudiation of our educational mission…an anathema to Pitzer’s core values.” Oliver also questioned the faculty in singling out Israel for special scrutiny among other foreign countries like China and Nepal where Pitzer also has study abroad programs.

On March 14, 2019, the PCC passed a motion to end the Haifa program. The motion, a non-binding recommendation for Oliver, passed with 68 votes in favor, 25 against and eight abstentions.

The motion outlined a “uniform policy” ending study abroad programs in countries that “restrict entry on the basis of either (a) legally protected political speech or (b) race or ancestry (as distinct from citizenship).” The motion claimed that the Haifa program violated the “uniform policy” and would be suspended immediately.

Also on March 14, 2019, Oliver released a statement declining to implement the PCC motion, saying, “By singling out Israel, the recommendation itself is prejudiced.”

In the statement, Oliver also said, “Although some claim that this is not an academic boycott of Israel, I disagree. The recommendation puts in place a form of academic boycott of Israel and, in the process, sets us on a path away from the free exchange of ideas, a direction which ultimately destroys the academy’s ability to fulfill our educational mission.”

On the same day, Pitzer’s student newspaper, The Student Life, reported: “In advance of the Haifa vote, the organization [Claremont SJP] has focused on outreach to Pitzer faculty and student senators, and on building a coalition of other campus groups.”

On March 15, 2019, Claremont SJP posted on Facebook that they would “continue to organize to suspend Haifa and demand that President Oliver reverse his decision.” Claremont SJP also posted an online petition demanding Oliver rescind his veto of the PCC motion and included the hashtag “#ProApartheidOliver.”

On March 25, 2019, Claremont SJP posted a Facebook event page for its “Palestine Freedom Weeks,” scheduled for March 25 to April 7, 2019. The event page promoted the BDS campaign against the Haifa program and used the hashtags “#SuspendPitzerHaifa” and “#MelvinWontListen.”

On March 31, 2019, the Pitzer College Student Senate, the college’s student government, introduced two resolutions at an “Emergency Meeting” called to address the Haifa program boycott campaign.

Claremont SJP members Shay Lari-Hosain and Jorj Chisam-Masjid were among the co-sponsors of the first resolution, which stated: “The Pitzer College Student Senate votes no confidence in President Melvin Oliver and, if President Oliver does not retract his anti-democratic decision by the end of the day on April 11, 2019, call for his immediate resignation or removal from office.”

Pitzer Senate president Shivani Kavuluru and vice presidents Kamyab Mashian and Dawson Reckers were among the co-sponsors of the second resolution. Their resolution censured Oliver for keeping the Haifa program and demanded that Oliver reverse his veto.

On April 7, 2019, the Pitzer Senate reportedly voted down the resolution of no confidence 20-12. However, the resolution censuring Oliver passed 29-0.

As of July 2021, Pitzer continued to offer its semester abroad program at the University of Haifa.

2018

SUPPORTING VIOLENT PROTESTERS

On April 15, 2018, Claremont SJP hosted a “Solidarity Vigil with Gaza” on campus in support of the March of Return riots. The event’s Facebook description alleged Israeli snipers “opened fire on thousands of unarmed protesters, killing at least 35 people, including photojournalist Yaser Murtaja while he was wearing a press jacket, and injuring at least 3,000.”

Yasser Murtaja, a photojournalist, was reportedly a Hamas spy who used drones to film Israeli positions. Murtaja was shot on April 6, 2018, as he filmed the 2018 “March of Return” protest in Gaza.

On March 30, 2018, some 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza approached Israel’s border to take part in “Land Day Protests” or the “March of Return.” The March of Return was organized and funded by Hamas as a campaign of violent protests along Israel’s border to spotlight the demand of Palestinians to “return” to Israel.

The “right of return” is a Palestinian demand discredited as a means to eliminate Israel.

March participants sent scores of kites bearing explosive devices across Israel’s border to burn Israeli crops and homes. Participants also attempted to breach the border fence, which caused the Israeli Defense Forces to respond with live fire.

Agitators threw Molotov cocktails, firebombs, shot firearms and threw rocks under the cover of smoke from burning tires.

On May 16, 2018, a Hamas senior official stated that 50 out of 62 protesters killed during a May 14 protest were Hamas operatives. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) also claimed that three of its members were killed at the same protest.

On April 17, 2018, Claremont SJP hosted “PFW: Political Prisoner Letter Writing Night!” as part of its 5C Palestinian Freedom Weeks 2018 (PFW 2018) which was held on campus April 9-20, 2018.

The event’s Facebook description read: “SJP will be addressing the topic of Palestinian political prisoners in connection to the Israeli occupation, capitalist exploitation, and child prisoners. Later, we will guide people in writing letters of support to political prisoners under the guidelines of Samidoun, a Palestinian prisoner solidarity network.”

As part of PFW 2018, on April 9, 2018, Claremont SJP hosted an event marking 70 years since the creation of the state of Israel. The event’s Facebook description read, “2018 marks the 70th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba — the planned mass expulsion of more than 750,000 indigenous Palestinians to establish an exclusionary Jewish-majority state in Palestine.”

Nakba is generally translated as “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the outcome of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It is a term often used to delegitimize the creation of the State of Israel by defining it as a catastrophe.

PROMOTING ANTI-ISRAEL AGITATORS

On April 14, 2018, Claremont SJP hosted an event on campus, titled “Voices of Palestine Resistance” to promote the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) was founded in 2001 and is allegedly “committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles.” ISM has been accused of supporting terrorism and has encouraged volunteers to act “as human shields in cities, towns and refugee camps.”

ISM has encouraged activists to break curfew and disregard Israeli directives prohibiting access to closed military zones, a policy which resulted in the death of American ISM activist Rachel Corrie in 2013.

The event’s Facebook description said: “The presentation includes an abridged version of Radiance of Resistance, a film by three ISM volunteers serving in Nabi Salih and featuring Ahed Tamimi and her cousin, Janna Ayyad.”

Ahed Tamimi was detained after she was filmed punching and kicking Israeli soldiers. She has a long history of physically attacking Israeli soldiers.

Tamimi is the daughter of Bassem Tamimi, who is known for exploiting young children as political props in staged confrontations with Israeli soldiers. In 2011, he was jailed for organizing violent rallies and inciting minors to commit violent crimes such as rock-throwing.

Ayyad, who is known as “Janna Jihad,” is a relative of Tamimi.

The village of Nabi Saleh is a Tamimi family stronghold. It is notorious as a place where photographers gather nearly every Friday to document scenes of Palestinian residents and international activists clashing with Israeli soldiers. Much of this is instigated by the Nabi Saleh Tamimi clan.

2017

DEMONIZING ISRAEL

On April 12, 2017, in conjunction with Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), Claremont SJP held a screening of an anti-Semitic documentary titled: “The Occupation of the American Mind.” The film claimed to show that Israel controls the American public’s view on Arab-Israeli conflict via the media.

On April 11, 201, as part of IAW, Claremont SJP held an event titled “Pinkwashing 101 Workshop.” The event page claimed “Pinkwashing is a deliberate marketing campaign that Israel uses to project an image of queer-friendliness in order to cover up its atrocities of apartheid, genocide, and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.”

On April 7, 2017, Claremont SJP published an article accusing Israel of being an “Apartheid state.” The article claimed: “700,000 Palestinians — Muslim, Christian, and Jewish alike — were violently uprooted and expelled from their homes by Zionist forces in 1948.”

The article went on to mislead its readers, claiming that “Palestinian citizens in Israel are also subject to racialized laws and regulations that inhibit them from living as equals under the law,” and that “There are over 50 laws that discriminate against Palestinians in Israel.”

The conclusion of the article encouraged readers to participate in its IAW events saying: “We call attention to these crimes this year in Israeli Apartheid week.”

On April 3, 2017, Claremont SJP erected a mock apartheid wall on the Pitzer college campus as part of IAW. On April 6, 2017, Claremont SJP wrote a blog post condemning individuals who displayed a large Israeli flag on campus in opposition to the wall, saying: “This flag shows the ideological underpinnings of Zionism, a settler-colonial project to lay claim to Palestinian indigenous land without acknowledging the human rights abuses, the violence, the massacres, the apartheid, and the walls that are necessary to sustain this project… this 20 foot flag that was hung in an attempt to cover up the horrors of Zionist violence.”

BDS ACTIVITIES

On April 16, 2017, which was the sixth day of Passover as well as Easter Sunday, Claremont Colleges’ Student Senate held a vote revising the Pitzer College Student Senate Budget Committee Bylaws.

Pitzer College student Simone Bishara added an amendment to the Student Activities Funds’ restrictions dictating that the student senate budget committee adhere to a boycott list formulated by the BDS movement. The amendment was approved in a secret ballot vote.

Bishara’s amendment to the Bylaws (P.4. Student Activities Funds, Section 2. Restrictions VI.) stated: “Student Activities Funds shall not be used to make a payment on goods or services from any corporation or organization associated with the unethical occupation of Palestinian territories. Products include those products from corporations and organizations as delineated in the boycott list maintained by bdsmovement.net/get-involved/what-toboycott.

Upon being informed of the vote, the executive boards of Claremont Progressive Israel Alliance (CPIA) and the Alpha Epsilon Pi of the Claremont Colleges circulated a petition that objected to the vote’s unexpected introduction and passage when many Jewish and Christian students, including student senators supportive of Israel, were off-campus, due to the holidays.

The petition also criticized the fact that the amendment was not announced before the meeting.

Bishara claimed that “the timing was merely an unfortunate coincidence.”

Claremont’s student newspaper, The Student Life, also reported that Bishara did not include the amendment in the first draft of the budgetary bylaws presented on April 9.

Because the BDS resolution was couched as an amendment, Bishara was not required to announce the measure on the meeting’s agenda. Bishara stated: “It’s just not procedurally how Senate does things.”

Although Bishara did not inform anyone from CPIA and the Alpha Epsilon Pi of the Claremont Colleges of the amendment, The Student Life reported that Bishara did “reach out” to some senators and Claremont SJP, which sent members to speak at the meeting in favor of the amendment.

Bishara told The Student Life she did not alert CPIA that she was presenting the amendment “because my intention was to have it pass. I have had enough intellectual conversation about why people disagree with me.”

Bishara went on to say: “My opinions are less rooted in academic knowledge or political belief and more in this identity-based concern,” she said. “It’s emotionally gutting for me to sit here and have to explain why I think these things are the right things to do…It’s just emotional labor that no one ever should have to do.”

In the same interview, Bishara claimed the amendment’s timing also made it difficult for her to go home to celebrate Easter.

“…I had to pull myself away from home and I would never, in a million years, ask anyone else to do that, and never in a million years would intentionally target something around somebody’s faith…I can’t even conceive of a world in which I would be okay if I knew somebody was doing that on purpose.”

Claremont SJP’s press release on Facebook celebrating the vote said it passed by “22 aye, 0 nay, 4 abstentions.” The announcement did not mention that the budget committee’s decisions would be tied to the dictates of the BDS movement.

2016

SUPPORTING A CONVICTED TERRORIST

On December 7, 2016, Claremont SJP posted on Facebook a call for support for Rasmea Odeh.

Odeh was a military operative with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization. In 1969, she masterminded a bombing that killed two university students in a Jerusalem supermarket. Odeh also attempted to bomb the British consulate.

Odeh confessed, in a highly detailed account, the day following her arrest. In a 2004 documentary, one of Odeh’s co-conspirators directly implicated her as the mastermind.

In 1970, an Israeli court tried and convicted Odeh for her involvement in both bombings and sentenced her to life imprisonment. However, Odeh was released 10 years later, in a prisoner swap and emigrated to the United States. In 2017, Odeh was deported to Jordan and stripped of U.S. citizenship, after admitting to immigration fraud.

SUPPORTING AN INCITER TO VIOLENCE

On July 12, 2016, Claremont SJP shared a petition on Facebook supporting Dareen Tatour, a Palestinian woman.

In October 2015, Tatour was placed under house arrest for incitement to violence and for support of a terrorist organization on social media.

Tatour had supported the terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and posted to her 4,800 + Facebook friends “I am the next shahid [martyr]” on Facebook under a picture of attempted-murderer Asraa Zidan Tawfik Abed. Tatour also posted a Youtube video of a woman reading a poem that glorified violence and rejected peace.

October 2015 saw an upsurge in violence across Israel incited by Palestinian political and religious leaders. The wave of stabbings, known as the “Knife Intifada,” saw young Palestinians throughout the country stabbing and attempting to stab scores of Israeli civilians.

HARASSING STUDENTS

On March 9, 2016, Claremont SJP posted a statement on Facebook defending their posting of mock eviction notices on student dorm room doors. The action was in violation of the college’s posting regulations.

The notice read: “EVICTION NOTICE: DORM SCHEDULED FOR DEMOLITION IN THREE (3) DAYS. If you do not vacate the premises by 3/10/2016 8 PM, we reserve the right to demolish your premises without delay.”

On March 11, 2016, It was reported that following expressions of concern by Jewish students that they were being targeted, Stan Skipworth — Claremont’s Director of Campus Safety — wrote in an email to the student body that “the flyers violated posting regulations at CMC, Pitzer College, and Scripps College.”

The Claremont SJP’s Facebook post also stated the group’s intention to engage in “pursuing boycott/divestment campaigns” at the Claremont Colleges.

2015

DEMONIZING ISRAEL

On October 28, 2015, Claremont SJP hosted a speaking event featuring anti-Israel journalist David Sheen titled, “The Bullet, the Ballot, & the Boycott: Racism in Israel Today.”

The Facebook post advertising the event announced that Sheen would “describe how top Israeli political and religious leaders use dehumanizing discourse to inspire vigilante attacks toward Palestinians, Africans and other non-Jews.”

The event was co-sponsored by JVP.

On April 2, 2015, Claremont SJP hosted an event screening the documentary “Occupation 101” as part of Claremont SJP’s Israeli Apartheid Week. The documentary is narrated by anti-Israel agitator Alison Weir, founder of the controversial anti-Semitic website If Americans Knew (IAK).

Weir is notorious for writing an article that endorsed a Swedish newspaper’s blood libel which claimed Israel harvested Palestinian organs.

On March 31, 2015, Claremont SJP installed a mock apartheid wall on campus that aimed to “bolster support for the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel.” Claremont SJP student activists posed as Palestinians supposedly being oppressed by an Israeli soldier next to the mock apartheid wall.

The mock wall misrepresented Israel’s security fence, which was built as a non-violent deterrent to Palestinian terrorist attacks — mostly by suicide bombers.

Claremont SJP’s wall featured text that read: “Zionism is Racism.” The wall also featured a series of maps that presented lands once controlled by Britain, Egypt and Jordan as autonomous “Palestinian land” purportedly stolen by Israel.

PROMOTING TERROR INCITEMENT

On October 17, 2015, Claremont SJP hosted an event featuring Nada Elia. Earlier that month, as radicalized Palestinians across Israel stabbed scores of Israeli civilians during the “Knife Intifada,” Elia wrote on October 7, 2015 an article titled “Why Be Afraid of an Intifada?” In the article, Elia stated: “Intifadas are good.”

The event was co-sponsored by JVP.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT SJP

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EDITORS NOTE: This Canary Mission column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Can Harvard Be Saved From DEI and a Debased Curriculum?

Harry Lewis has been at Harvard, man and boy, for fifty years. He’s a professor of computer science, and formerly Dean of Harvard. He has long been a Cassandra, a vox clamantis in deserto, alarmed about the state of education at Harvard, where he has registered the decline brought about by the madness of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and by self-indulgent faculty members who teach what they want — their niche subjects — rather than what the students need. More on Professor Lewis’s analysis of Harvard’s “debased curriculum,” and comments on it by Professor Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution, can be found here: “Harvard’s Crisis Stems From Debased Curriculum,” by Peter Berkowitz, Real Clear PoliticsFebruary 18, 2024:

Last month, Harry Lewis published a Harvard Crimson column that squarely laid the blame on Harvard for the crisis that has engulfed the great university. Fifty years of experience on the banks of the Charles River inform Lewis’ severe judgment: He is a longtime Harvard computer science professor, a 1968 Harvard College graduate, and, from 1995 to 2003, he served as dean of Harvard College. Nevertheless, while illuminating Harvard’s damaging politicization over the last 20 years of its undergraduate curriculum – and despite his half century at Harvard – Lewis overlooks the full extent of the crisis.

In “Reaping What We Have Taught,” Lewis maintained that the surge of antisemitism on campus following Hamas’ perpetration of mass atrocities in Israel on Oct. 7 was not the fault of Claudine Gay, who resigned as Harvard’s president in early January. Nor, he asserted, had Harvard admitted antisemitic students or hired antisemitic faculty. The problem, rather, lies in Harvard’s curriculum: “Unapologetic antisemitism – whether the incidents are few or numerous – is a college phenomenon because of what we teach, and how our teachings are exploited by malign actors.”

Lewis performed a simple experiment. He typed into the Harvard online course catalog search box key words associated with fashionable progressive ideology. The word “decolonize,” he found, “is in the titles of seven courses and the descriptions of 18 more” – more than triple its appearance before 2000. The words “oppression” and “liberation” are each “in the descriptions of more than 80 courses,” while “‘Social justice’ is in over 100.” Lewis also searched for “white supremacy” and “Enlightenment” – these days, it is often said, the latter arises out of and perpetuates the former. He discovered that the terms’ appearances in the online course catalog run “neck and neck, both ahead of ‘scientific revolution’ but behind ‘intersectionality,’” which barely registered before 2000…..

Consider the Ethics & Civics category. The 2024 spring semester offerings feature such options as “Ethics of Climate Change,”; “Evolving Morality: From Primordial Soup to Superintelligent Machines,” and “Ignorance, Lies, Hogwash, and Humbug” (which deals with fake news and other forms of deceit that mark “the post-truth era”). With one of these courses, students can check the ethics and civics requirement at Harvard without ever studying Western civilization’s biblical and classical foundations, the synthesis of faith and reason in the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Middle Ages, the modern tradition of freedom’s emergence in the 17th and 18th centuries, and, not least, America’s founding principles and constitutional traditions.

The post-Oct. 7 educational crisis at Harvard, entwined with antisemitism, has been several decades in the making. Effective reform must replace the current curriculum, which advances professors’ interests in niche scholarship and partisan politics, with one that serves students’ interests in acquiring an organized introduction to the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences and in undertaking a reasoned exploration of the United States, the West, and the world.

Can the curriculum be changed at Harvard, removing niche subjects offered by self-indulgent professors, so that again requiring that students be provided with what they need to know: the “general education” that demands basic instruction in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences? And who will remove the modish madness of DEI from the campus, so that it no longer the deciding factor in determining the courses that are taught, the faculty who are hired, and the students who are admitted? What Dean or future President of Harvard would take on the twin tasks of DEI removal and curriculum reform? Perhaps, despite his age, the Harvard Corporation will offer the job of President to Harry Lewis himself. That would be a welcome sign from the Corporation that it’s willing to break with the past. Harvard could not do better.

AUTHOR

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Most Powerful Education Idea Ever?

→ Warning! I’ve been periodically accused of having some interesting, creative ideas before, but IMHO this may be one of the best ever!

Before I reveal a unique and powerful solution to what is ostensibly our most serious societal peril, we need to be clear about what the peril is. This is a brief outline:

  1. The worst current problem in US K-12 schools (by far), is WHAT our children are being taught — i.e., what is in (or missing from) the curriculum.
  2. IMO the part of the curriculum that has been most extensively corrupted, is the subject area of Science. This is due to 49± states fully (or mostly) adopting the progressive Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which is a frontal assault on traditional Science (e.g., they quietly extracted the Scientific Method, and are subverting Critical Thinking). See this Report for details.
  3. Although you likely haven’t heard it before, this is arguably the most significant attack on America. Every year this results in some 3 million propagandized high school graduates, who shortly become voting citizensThis is unsustainable!
  4. Essentially no one (parents, teachers, legislators, State Boards of Education, scientists, conservative organizations, etc.) is exposing the NGSS for what it is.
  5. Likewise, no one has come up with a realistic alternative to the NGSS, or a practical solution to fix the NGSS — until today!

Now that you have a glimpse of the profound consequences of this major unaddressed societal problem, let’s proceed to a unique and powerful solution…

In most US schools, the Science offerings in K-8 are general and rudimentary. In High School, they get more specific and more advanced. For example, in HS there is typically one year each of such classes as biology, geology, chemistry, and physics. (Sometimes there are quasi-fluff options like environmental science.)

The assumption is that after eight years of general science, students are prepared for (and interested in) more depth in the traditional Sciences. [Note: Based on current NGSS-oriented curriculums, the accuracy of that assumption is highly questionable.]

What’s proposed here is that a mandatory “overview” Science class be given to all 9th graders. An appropriate title might be: Real Science 101 — but be creative with the name!

The mandatory part is because Science is now an essential element of our existence, so every child needs to be taught some in-depth Science basics — which parents assume are being covered. However, due to the proliferation of the NGSS, almost all of the examples below are superficially treatedmistreated, or ignored:

  1. Critical Thinking (Properly defining, understanding, and teaching it. This includes appreciating the numerous, profound benefits of being a critical thinker.)
  2. Linear vs Lateral thinking (there are significant merits for both)
  3. Social Emotional Learning (how Critical Thinking can achieve SEL objectives)
  4. Why is Science under assault? (Science is a gatekeeper, Science is respected, etc.)
  5. Definition of Science (Science is a Process)
  6. History of the Scientific Method (4000± years of a successful process)
  7. The four key elements of a Scientific Assessment (Objective, Comprehensive, Empirical, and Transparent)
  8. Hypothesis vs Theory (explaining the different levels of Scientific certainty)
  9. Scientific responsibility (Is it the proponent’s obligation to prove their claim, or is it the obligation of skeptics to disprove it?)
  10. Science and Public Relations (Is being right enough to win the day?)
  11. Science and Public Policy (How should the two relate?)
  12. Real Science vs political science (not even remotely similar)
  13. Consensus (not a Scientific procedure, but rather a political aspiration)
  14. Peer Review (a good idea that has been co-opted)
  15. Statistics (the good, bad, and the ugly of probabilities, etc.)
  16. Data (there’s data and then there’s data)
  17. Correlation vs Causality (What is the relationship between the two?)
  18. Computer Models and projections (benefits and substantial weaknesses)
  19. Science vs Scientists (Are studies by scientists, Scientific?)
  20. Scientists and Relativism (Does the end objective justify the means?)
  21. Post-Normal Science (Are some technical issues beyond the ability of Science to assess?)
  22. Normative Science (agenda-driven scientists rarely produce real Science)
  23. Technical terminology (conveying hidden messages with carefully chosen words)
  24. The Precautionary Principle (Is this scientific or ideological?)
  25. Intuition vs Science (making assumptions can easily lead to unscientific conclusions)
  26. Scientists vs Engineers (how they differ in objectives, methodology, etc.)
  27. The Mantle of Science (How should bogus claims about Science be exposed?)
  28. Science and the Media (journalism vs advocacy)
  29. Artificial Intelligence (our best friend and our worst enemy)
  30. Science and Religion (Can Science prove, or disprove, the existence of God?)

Note 1: Essentially none of these Real Science matters are covered in the NGSS.

Note 2: Worse, in the NGSS, the opposite message is conveyed about several of these.

Note 3: HS teachers would need to have a Professional Development class to properly teach such a course.

Note 4: This would also be an excellent general Science class for all college freshmen.

Note 5: The above is a suggested chronological order of topics to cover.

After taking such a class:

  1. ALL students would be better prepared to encounter a Science (and pseudo-science) world, even if they never took another Science class,
  2. All students would perform better on state and national Science tests.
  3. Because (if done right) this would likely be perceived to be the most interesting high school course offered (in all subject areas), a higher percentage of students would become STEM-interested.
  4. STEM students would be MUCH better prepared to subsequently take traditional Science classes in high school and college.

For the above four significant reasons, this should become a state-required class, built into each state’s Science Standards.

Note: All of the states’ current Science standards that are NGSS-based, would then need to be reviewed (which was already essential to critically do anyway), as some of Real Science 101 conflicts with NGSS. That’s a good thing…

The bottom line

Requiring this one class would result in extraordinary benefits to students — and subsequently to our society.

PS — This recommendation does not mean that we forget what’s going on in K-8. 9th grade was selected as several of the above topics are too advanced for a 3rd grader. That said, having a more elemental course on Critical Thinking in early grades is very advisable. Interestingly, a textbook publisher is already offering such material.

PPS — When I get the time, I’ll fill out most of the thirty items with helpful reference links. At this point, the objective is just to convey and discuss this significant idea.

PPPS — Since this is of extreme importance, I’m posting the latest version of this material online (as a PDF), where it will be easier to download, etc.

©2024. John Droz, Jr. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: Government-Run Education

Early American Literacy Versus Today’s Woke Education — What are they teaching your children?

In recent decades the quality of American education has plummeted.

When you scan the headlines related to education, you realize how far we have fallen:

∙A “non-binary” activist teacher promotes the woke agenda for kindergarteners and claims that the U.S. and Israel have “no right to exist.”

∙Harvard, America’s oldest and most prestigious college (historically), now teaches a class on the pop singer Taylor Swift. Harvard’s tuition costs $75,000 a year.

∙A Seattle high school teacher, who praised Hamas in class, failed a student on a quiz. Why? The student said men can’t get pregnant. When the student’s mom complained, the school authorities stood by the teacher, not the student.

∙A social studies teacher in Maine assigned her high school students to write their own “Declaration of Independence,” maybe, she suggested, even from their own parents.

∙An elementary school principal in Oklahoma performed as a drag queen. He has since resigned.

Needless to say, there is a battle over education today.

But when you look at early American education, there is no question that the Bible in one way or another was the chief textbook for the first 200-300 years. This led to widespread literacy.

In fact, I have produced a documentary for Providence Forum entitled, “The Beginning of Wisdom.” The title comes from the Scriptures, which say that, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” This film aims to show what was right about early education, and how did it get that way.

At one time, America was among the best educated nations in the world. James Madison of Virginia, a key architect of the Constitution, said, “A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.”

The first school law passed in America was in Boston in the 1640s, and it was nicknamed, “The Old Deluder Satan Act.” The law begins, “It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times.” Therefore, schools were to be systematically established so that the children could read and write for themselves.

The Puritans dreaded to “leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust,” so they started a school of higher learning that more ministers of the Gospel could be produced. That was Harvard, named after a donor, Rev. John Harvard.

All of the original colleges and universities were created by Christians for Christian purposes. Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, and so on. These schools set the standard for education throughout the land.

The only Ivy League school that was not explicitly Christian in its founding was Cornell which was established in the 1840s—more than 200 years after Harvard.

One of the guests in our program is the Jewish scholar Dennis Prager, founder of PragerU. He mentions this fact about the third oldest college in North America: “The insignia of Yale University is in Hebrew. It’s the mantle or the breastplate that the high priest of Israel wore, Urim veha-Tummim, and it’s in Hebrew.… Do you know how immersed you had to be in the Bible to know that, and if you were not a Jew to know those words, Urim veha-Tummim? And that’s, to this day, the insignia of Yale University.”

In 1789, Catholics founded Georgetown University in what is now Washington, DC and in 1842, they founded Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. Even today, Catholic schools in the inner-city are legendary in throwing a lifeline for children in need.

Another guest in the documentary is Joyce Burges, who co-founded, with her husband, the National Black Home Education League. She says, “Booker T. Washington was a Christian man, and when he founded Tuskegee Institute he shared those Christian principles with the students.  As a matter of fact, be believed in the broom, the Bible, and the book, meaning, education, chores, and the Word of God.”

Education for the masses, using Bible-based books like The New England Primer and McGuffey’s Readers (the earliest versions) helped create a well-educated populace.

Using Mike Huckabee as the voice of Thomas Jefferson, we close the documentary with this statement from our third president: “If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was & never will be. Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.”

Around 1800, after almost 200 years of strong Christian influence in the schools, John Adams remarked that to find an illiterate man in New England was as rare as a comet.

How far we have fallen. My prayer is that God would revive the works of His hand in this nation.

Copyright 2024. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: How High School Theater Culture Set the Wokeness Train Into Motion

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America Requires an Educational Revolution! Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier—Reality Is

Globalism is a replacement ideology that seeks to reorder the world into one singular, planetary Unistate, ruled by the globalist elite themselves. The globalist war on nation-states cannot succeed without collapsing the United States of America. The long-term strategic attack plan moves America incrementally from constitutional republic to socialism to globalism to feudalism. The tactical attack plan uses asymmetric psychological and informational warfare to destabilize Americans and drive society out of objective reality into the madness of subjective reality. America’s children are the primary target of the globalist predators.

Critical thinking is the objective analysis of facts in order to form a judgment. It is the foundation of rational thought. Critical thinking depends upon accurate information, otherwise known as facts, and therefore relies upon objective reality. The ability to remain in objective reality is threatened when disinformation, misinformation, fiction, and fantasy (all forms of subjective reality) are presented as fact. It is impossible to make an informed decision without an accurate source of information.

Reading is the essential foundational skill individual citizens use to access information and make informed decisions. Together, reading, writing, and arithmetic are the communication tools that equip children with agency. Understanding the psychological concept of agency is extremely important to our discussion. Encyclopedia.com i defines and discusses agency:

The concept of agency as a psychological dimension refers to the process of behaving with intentionality. Human beings exercise agency when they intentionally influence their own functioning, environments, life circumstances, and destiny. To posit that human beings have agency is to contend that they are self-organizing, proactive, self-regulating,
and self-reflecting rather than reactively shaped by environmental forces or driven by concealed inner impulses.

Reading provides agency for learning because textbooks, including math and science textbooks, require the ability to read. Reading provides a sense of independence, accomplishment, and self-sufficiency. Competence is the mother of self-esteem, and learning to read is a seismic shift in a child’s perception of self. The child begins to feel his or her power.

Encyclopedia.com continues:

To exercise human agency, people must believe in their capability to attain given ends. These self-efficacy beliefs are the foundation of human motivation, well-being, and accomplishment. Whatever other factors serve as guides and motivators, they are rooted in the core belief that one has the power to effect changes by one’s actions, that one’s locus of control is internal rather than external. This is because unless people believe that their actions can produce the outcomes they desire, they have little incentive to act or to persevere in the face of difficulties.

Truth-in-lending laws exist to provide consumers with informed consent. Surgical consent forms and food labels equip patients with information to make informed decisions about their health. Product labeling, food labeling, Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS)—all are attempts to provide consumers with the accurate information necessary to make informed decisions. Laws and labels acknowledge the existence of conflicts of interest and are attempts to level the playing field. What happens when Johnny can’t read them?

The educational battlefield is grooming children for life without agency in the globalist Unistate.

In 2021, Samuel Blumenfeld and Alex Newman published a stunning book, Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy American Children. ii

The book describes the intentional exploitation of public education to dumb down American students and condition them for life in a socialist state:

The plan to dumb down America was launched in 1898 by socialist John Dewey, outlined in an essay titled “The Primary-Education Fetich.” In it he showed his fellow progressives how to transform America into a collectivist utopia by taking over the public schools and destroying the literacy of millions of Americans. The plan has been so successfully implemented that it is now a fact that half of America’s adult population are functionally illiterate. They can’t read their country’s Declaration of Independence. They can’t even read their high school diplomas.

The method of achieving this was simply changing the way children are taught to read in their schools. The utopians got rid of the intensive phonics method of instruction and imposed a look-say, sight, or whole-word method that forces children to read English as if it were Chinese. The method is widely used in today’s public schools, which is why there are so many failing public schools that cannot teach children the basics. This can only be considered a blatant and evil form of child abuse. (Crimes of the Educators, p. xii)

Blumenfeld and Newman explain:

Brain scans now prove beyond a doubt that the sight, or whole-word, method of teaching reading creates dyslexia and functional illiteracy by forcing children to use their right brains to perform functions designed for their left brains. Deliberately impairing a child’s brain ought to be a punishable offense. (Crimes of the Educators, p. xiv) Globalist John Dewey (1859–1952), American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, is considered the father of “progressive” education. I put the word progressive in quotation marks because the effort to dumb down our nation is entirely regressive, precisely the opposite of progressive.

Dewey understood that socialism could not be imposed on America by force, and he advised his followers that change must come slowly. In his infamous 1898 essay, “The Primary-Education Fetich,” iii Dewey described America’s insistence upon high literacy as a “false educational god” that worships “language study”:

This is language-study––the study not of foreign language, but of English; not in higher, but in primary education. It is almost an unquestioned assumption, of educational theory and practice both, that the first three years of a child’s school life shall be mainly taken up with learning to read and write his own language.

Blumenfeld and Newman elaborate:

In America, the greatest, the richest, and freest nation on earth, the imposition had to be subtle, slow, patient, and “democratic.” The primary vehicle for this change would be the public schools, where the dumbing-down process could be carried out without parents knowing what was being done to their children. (Crimes of the Educators, pp. 2–3) The only way to undermine the capitalist system was to get rid of the emphasis primary schools placed on the development of high literacy and independent intelligence. Why? Because both of these sustain individualism. What was needed, they believed, was a new curriculum that emphasized socialization and taught children to read by a whole-word method that would lower the nation’s literacy level and make its children more amenable to collectivist values. (Crimes of the Educators, pp. 1–2)

To Dewey, the greatest obstacle to socialism was the private mind that seeks knowledge in order to exercise its own private judgment agency and intellectual authority. High literacy gave the individual the means to seek knowledge independently. It gave members of society the means to stand on their own two feet and think for themselves. This was detrimental to the “social spirit” needed to bring about a collectivist society. (Crimes of the Educators, p. 5) Dewey attacked the emphasis on reading, writing, and arithmetic in young children at the time.

The “3Rs,” the foundational skills that produce highly literate, independent, rational adult individualists, were in conflict with Dewey’s collectivism. Dewey advocated a seismic shift in American education that focused on socialization and group interactions to promote a collectivist mentality for life in a socialist America. Dewey’s hopes for reconstructing America were resurrected in Barack Obama’s collectivist promise to “fundamentally transform America.”

John Dewey and his co-conspirators deceitfully presented the shift to teaching reading with sight-words as an advancement in American education. Dewey knew that reading was the foundational skill for acquiring knowledge. He knew his reading program was inferior to the traditional phonics method, but he insisted it was superior. And his deceit was believed by educators for decades.

It wasn’t until 1955, when American educator Rudolph Flesch published his stunning exposé, Why Johnny Can’t Read: and what you can do about it, iv that the general public had any idea of the disastrous effects of the whole-word teaching method. Even then, it was inconceivable to Americans that whole-word instruction was a deliberate attack on America’s According to Sun Tzu, “All warfare is based on deception. Practice dissimulation and you will succeed.” The insistence on the benefits of teaching reading with sight-words instead of phonics, disseminated by leftist politicians and embraced by the National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union in America, is a weapon of war. Adding insult to injury, it is the U.S. taxpayers who are funding the Department of Education and its inexcusable insistence on whole word instruction. Deliberately dumbing down children is weaponized, politicized education, and it is an act of war against the United States of America.

Like the chilling success of political medicine, the educational battlefront has been stunningly successful because trusted experts in education continue to promote the lie that whole-word reading instruction promotes literacy.

Americans cannot believe that our professional and highly respected educators could be involved in a conspiracy to deliberately dumb down the nation. They recognize that we are indeed being dumbed down, but they don’t blame the educators. They blame the children and the culture. In short, this conspiracy is protected by incredulity. (Crimes of the Educators, p. 29)

The globalist War on America being fought in government schools has made an Educational Revolution necessary. Comprehensive educational reform is required to finally eliminate progressivism’s catastrophic sight-word reading method and its resulting school-induced dyslexia from American schools. Truth in education, like truth in lending, must be demanded in order to provide the American public with accurate information to make decisions about their and their children’s future.

Weaponized education has weakened America through illiteracy and individual lack of agency.

A life without agency is a life without freedom.

i Encyclopedia.com
ii Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy American Children
iii The Primary-Education Fetich, John Dewey 1898
iv Why Johnny Can’t Read: and what you can do about it

Copyright 2024. Linda Goudsmit. All rights reserved.

Maryland: Muslim Teacher Says She’s Victim of Racism After She’s Suspended for Calling for Israel’s Disappearance

A Muslim elementary school teacher in Maryland has filed a discrimination complaint after being suspended for using the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as her email signature. More on the outraged, and outrageous, Hajur El-Haggan, can be found here: “Muslim school teacher says she’s victim of racism after being suspended for using ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ as her email signature,” by Emma Richter, DailyMail.com

A Muslim school teacher in Maryland said that she is a victim of racism after she was suspended for using ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ as her email signature.

Hajur El-Haggan, a math teacher at Argyle Middle School, was placed on administrative leave in November after she was told that her chosen signature was not allowed.

This was her school email, not her personal account. Students, parents, and fellow teachers would all be subjected, in their email correspondence with her, to this message: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

This phrase is a call for the establishment of a Palestinian state on all the land from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, and for the disappearance of the Jewish state. All of its Jewish inhabitants would be expelled or killedRightly understood, it is a call for ethnic cleansing, and the replacement of the only Jewish state by a twenty-third Arab one. It is understandable that the principal would not want one of his teachers displaying such a sentiment on a school account.

The Muslim and Arab-American teacher has since gone on to file a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Maryland Commission on Human Rights against Montgomery County Public Schools.

‘I have co-workers who have “Black Lives Matter” in their email signatures, or links to their pronouns and what they mean. My quote does not fall into a different category,’ El-Haggan told KUTV.

She is wrong. Her quote is in a different category. “Black Lives Matter” does not call for ethnic cleansing or the destruction of a state and its people. Phrases about pronouns that have to do with self-identification as non-binary, similarly, are not a threat to the existence of anyone. “From the river to the sea” is such a threat; it means politicide accompanied by ethnic cleansing.

The complaint stated that after she was reprimanded by the school’s principal about her email signature, she offered to take it down, but they [sic] proceeded to tell her that she would still be suspended.

Even if El-Haggan had taken down that email signature, that would not have changed the fact that she supports the disappearance of Israel, and the removal of all of the Jews living now “between the river and the sea.” Isn’t that the real “racism” that is involved here, and not her suspension? She was not suspended because she is a Muslim Arab, but because of her support for the ethnic cleansing of Jews “from the river to the sea.”

The discrimination complaint, which has also been filed with the local Fair Employment Practices Agency, said that El-Haggan and her colleagues at the school ‘hold certain personal and political views regarding various social injustices.’…

Would a teacher who had made known his, or her, support for the KKK, or for neo-Nazi groups, be allowed to continue as a teacher? El-Haggan’s views are not merely “political,” but rather, a call for the destruction of a country and the ethnic cleansing — some might even say the attempted “genocide” — of its people.

The complaint also noted that besides El-Haggan, other teachers in the middle school ‘expressed opinions about various political and social matters.’…

But none of her fellow teachers called for what amounts to ethnic cleansing. 

‘Just like here in America, we have “From sea to shining sea,” it’s no different. It’s a call for freedom, peace, basic rights, and humanity and coexistence,’ El-Haggan said….

No, Ms. Al-Haggan. They are not the same. “From sea to shining sea” is merely the geographical description of a country — America — that is being celebrated as “beautiful/from sea to shining sea.” “From the river to the sea” is not a call for “freedom, peace, basic rights, and humanity and coexistence,” but rather, a malevolent call for the destruction of a state and its people.

The complaint also said that that three days before she was placed on leave, the Palestinian flag in her car that said ‘Free Palestine was cut off of her vehicle and written on….

Did she promptly report this act? It would be strange – should raise a skeptical eyebrow – if she had not done so. Or was this claimed attack dreamed up later to support her lawsuit, suggesting that she was living in a hostile, anti-Palestinian, racist environment?

The phrase ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ has long been seen as a call for destruction by the Jewish population, but for the Palestinian community and their supporters, it has been seen as a peaceful call for liberation.

No, that phrase is not seen as a “peaceful call for liberation” by the Palestinians. They know exactly what it means — the destruction of the Jewish state and the expulsion, or killing, of its Jewish population. In this hoped-for future state of “Palestine,” only Israeli Arabs would be allowed to remain.

There is speech that is beyond the pale. Calling for the destruction of a state and its people, because of their religion, is such speech. It is reasonable for the Montgomery County School Board to want to protect its students from such speech, directed at the only Jewish state, just as it would want to protect them from teachers found to endorse the KKK or neo-Nazis. El-Haggan and her lawyer hope to convince the judge that “from the river to the sea” is an innocuous call for “peace and liberation.” It is not. And the lawsuit will be determined by whether or not the judge, or possibly members of a jury, understand its malevolent significance.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

EXCLUSIVE: Internal Documents Shed Light On Biden Administration’s Plan To Impose DEI On Pentagon-Run Schools

The Department of Defense agency that runs schools for military children approved a contract worth up to nearly $2 million for extensive Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programming and consultations, according to a copy of the contract obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation from the Functional Government Initiative.

The Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) chose BCT Partners, a management consulting firm focused on “equity,” to create an “action plan” for the agency’s DEI program in 2021, noting that “DoDEA has never had a systemic contract for this type of work,” the document shows. Among a sweeping list of requirements, the contract includes a comprehensive assessment of DEI policies across DoDEA, ongoing consulting, program development, and professional learning for senior leadership, administrators and even students.

“DoDEA schools’ demographics reflect those of the U.S. military it serves. The DoDEA senior leadership and [headquarters] staff demographics are not identical to our schools’ demographics,” the section of the contract describing performance objectives states.

The contract, signed in November 2021, is described as “an indefinite-quantity contract” and included the possibility for optional renewals until May 2028.

DoDEA has paid more than $600,000 to date, according to open source federal award data. However, it has the potential to add over $1.2 million before the contract ends for a maximum of $1,987,347 over the one base year and four possible add-on years.

“DoDEA recognizes that successful Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) strategic implementation requires (1) well-informed leadership teams that champion DEI initiatives, (2) engaged leaders, managers, supervisors, and administrators that participate on diversity councils, (3) strong instructional leadership in every school, (4) informed employees that value the impact of race, diversity, equality, and inclusion on DoDEA’s culture, and (5) integrated approaches to promote DEI principles in curriculum implementation, educator preparation, and professional learning,” the section of the contract labeled “background” stated.

“DEI focuses on race, equity, diversity and inclusion which simply means ‘fairness or justice in the way people are treated, especially when dealing with the seven protected classes of people,’” the “background” stated.

D0DEA served approximately 66,000 students at 174 schools in the U.S. and at military bases around the world at the time the contract was written, according to the description.

Over the next year, BCT Partners would have provided a “DEI Evaluation Assessment Report” of survey data DODEA had already compiled. The assessment would include identifying supposed “inequities, barriers and gaps” that prevent DODEA from implementing DEI principles throughout the agency, influencing everything from recruitment, retention and promotion to teaching and learning practices.

Another objective was to provide at least 75 annual “interactive expert DEI consultation services,” running 90 minutes each, to 50 members of the senior executive service, other senior leadership, the DEI Director, and members of twelve working groups.

At the time, Kelisa Wing served as DEI Director for the agency and is listed as a point of contact on the contract.

The Pentagon reassigned Wing in March citing routine personnel “restructuring” needs, although the move came after a social media post Wing made criticizing white people sparked a controversy.

BCT Partners would help draft DoDEA’s DEi Charter and Strategic Plan, provide ongoing professional support services and guide the agency step-by-step through evaluating and inculcating DEI across the agency, the contract shows.

The contract also included a list of words and definitions related to DEI, including, “micro-aggression,” “gaslighting” and three different definitions for the word “racism.”

Antiracism was defined in the contract as an “active and conscious effort to work against multidimensional aspects of racism.”

It also included a definition for Critical Race Theory explicitly based on the work of Kimberle Crenshaw, described as “a founding critical race theorist and law professor at UCLA and Columbia universities.”

“Systematic racism,” states this definition in the contract, “is part of the American life and challenges the beliefs that allow it to flourish. It is an approach to grappling with a history of white supremacy that rejects the belief that what is in the past is in the past and that the laws and systems that flow from that past are detached from it. It attends not only to laws transformative role which is often celebrated but also to its role in establishing the very rights and privileges that legal reform was set to dismantle.”

Two contract modifications were also awarded, one in June 2022 and another in April 2023, increasing the funding ceiling for the contractor. The specific increase was redacted.

The contract was awarded in accordance with President Joe Biden’s executive order aimed at promoting race-conscious policies and training throughout the federal government, according to the contract.

In 2021, DoDEA rolled out a four-year plan to implant DEI in areas of recruitment and retention, promotion and development, and teaching and learning; established the DEI Headquarters team and launched DEI working groups at headquarters and in its each of its eight school districts, according to the Department of Defense’s 2022 Equity Action Plan.

DoDEA and BCT Partners did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

“CRT is a controversial academic theory that asserts racial inequality is ongoing and endemic in America, rooted in legal systems, policies, economic markets, and education. Critics argue it is fundamentally at odds with the military’s meritocratic values. Nevertheless, CRT has found a way into the U.S. defense establishment,” the Functional Government Initiative told the DCNF in a statement.

AUTHOR

MICAELA BURROW

Investigative reported, defense.

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: ‘Use Your Privilege’: Air Force Promotes All-Day ‘Allyship’ Training

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Columbia University: Posters appear featuring skunk with Star of David, ‘Skunk on Campus’

The combination of Leftist and Islamic Jew-hatred is creating a particularly threatening environment for Jewish and pro-Israeli students.

https://x.com/shaidavidai/status/1752885796921622612?s=12&t=SDSG25xf9fp_h3ec407xlw

The National Socialists called Jews “vermin” and presented their mass murder of them as a purification of Germany, and of Europe in general. The people behind these posters aren’t far from that.

“Antisemitic poster of skunk with Star of David plastered across Columbia University: ‘Villainizes Jewish and Israeli students,’” by Aneeta Bhole, New York Post, February 6, 2024:

An antisemitic flier depicting a skunk in the white and blue of the Israeli flag and a Star of David has surfaced on Columbia University’s campus, sparking outrage among the Jewish community.

The poster “villainizes Jewish and Israeli students on campus and fosters an increasingly hostile environment,” according to the Anti-Defamation League for New York and New Jersey, who blasted the Columbia administration for not taking action to stop it sooner on X.

The skunk depiction has been likened to Nazi propaganda posters used during World War II — which dehumanized the Jewish community and compared them to vermin.

“That skunk poster evokes classic antisemitic tropes that are instantly familiar to anyone who has seen Nazi propaganda,” the director of programming and strategy at End Jew Hatred Michelle Ahdoot told the Post.

The post was highlighted by Shai Davidai, an Assistant Professor at Columbia’s business school.

“This poster seen today on campus depicts all Israelis as skunks. If any other group was depicted as animals, the school would have already called the FBI to investigate,” he wrote on X.

“What’s next? All Jews are vermin? Columbia University – what the f*** are you waiting for?”

A Columbia University spokesperson told the Post that the posters were found on campus this past week and were deemed “abhorrent and antisemitic” by the administration.

“As soon as the University learned of them, they were removed and a report was filed under the University’s anti-discrimination policies,” a statement from Columbia continued.

It remains unclear who made the poster which reads — “Beware! Skunk on Campus. Brought to you in collaboration by Columbia University and the IDF,” referring to the Israel Defense Forces, who are currently battling Hamas in Gaza, causing tensions between Muslims and Jewish people to rise around the globe….

AUTHOR

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

TRAINING HITLER YOUTH: NYC Teachers on How to ‘Get Around Censorship’ to Teach Kids about the ‘Genocide in Gaza’

Save the children. Get your kids out of government schools.

NYC teachers will exchange notes on how to ‘get around censorship’ to teach kids about the ‘genocide in Gaza’

By Aneeta Bhole, Emily Crane, NY Post, Feb. 1, 2024:

A faction of New York City educators are hosting a virtual seminar this weekend to share resources on how to “get around censorship” and teach students about the “Israeli occupation” and “ongoing genocide in Gaza,” The Post has learned.

The virtual “curriculum share” event, which is scheduled for this Saturday, is being organized by the group NYC Educators For Palestine and is geared towards K-12 classroom teachers, various promotional materials show.

“Teachers will have the opportunity to present and share original lessons and materials they have developed on topics such as Palestinian history, the history of Israeli occupation, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” a description of the two-hour seminar said.

“Every teacher who attends the curriculum share will leave with a collection of lessons they can use with their students.”

At least one principal, Terri Grey, who heads the Virtual Innovators Academy — a remote public school for first-year 9th and 10th graders — has been boosting the upcoming event to her educators.

A flier for the seminar 3

New York City teachers are slated to meet at a seminar this weekend so they can share resources on how to “get around censorship.” NYC Educators for Palestine

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.