Rutgers Goes Sharia Compliant — Submits to Islamic Supremacism

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In FrontPage I discuss Rutgers’ capitulation to Sharia supremacism:

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The April 5, 2016 issue of The Gleaner, the student paper of Rutgers University–Camden, published a cartoon of Muhammad, Buddha and Jesus in a bar. Its content, however, cannot be known at this point, because at the behest of Muslims on campus, and in a case fraught with implications for the health of the freedom of speech today, the entire issue has been deep-sixed.

Two weeks after the cartoon was published, the April 19 issue of The Gleaner contained a letter from the Muslim Brotherhood campus group, the Muslim Students Association, saying that it found the image offensive and asking The Gleaner to remove the image from the April 5 issue and circulate a new edition of that issue without it. The MSA letter claims that Christians and Jews on campus told MSA members that they, too, found the image offensive.

The MSA letter states: “Even though freedom of speech and press is emphasized and is something all of us value as proud Americans, the University prides itself on diversity of people of different faith and backgrounds so we feel that it is necessary to respect those faiths and backgrounds by honoring their beliefs.”

The April 19 Gleaner also contains a response to the MSA letter, written by Christopher Church, the Editor-in-Chief of The Gleaner. Church apologizes to the MSA and agrees to meet with it “so that we can rectify this issue and ensure that it doesn’t happen again.” He also agrees to remove any copies of the offending April 5 issue from the Gleaner boxes around campus and destroy them.

The Jihad Watch reader who alerted me to this sums up what is wrong here:

1. Freedom of speech is a Constitutional right. It is not negated by someone’s taking offense. This could have been and should have been a chance for Rutgers and The Gleaner to explain why the freedom of speech must be protected as our fundamental bulwark against tyranny, and why that means that we must all learn to put up with material that offends us.

2. Once a group’s feeling offended is taken as decisive, it may begin to take offense at other aspects of campus life it finds offensive. In the MSA’s case, it may begin getting offended at men and women sharing classrooms or coeds wearing tight jeans on campus.

3. In light of the violent attacks on those who have depicted Muhammad, The Gleaner by removing the image is bowing to the implicit threat of violence — which only in the long run encourages more violence. Rutgers’ Art Library recently featured an “artwork” depicting Jesus on a dartboard. It was ultimately removed, but not because it offended Christians. No one cares if Christians are offended: Rutgers officials know that offended Christians won’t murder them. Their solicitousness toward the MSA, by contrast, reveals that they know offended Muslims might very well kill them, and rather than stand up for the freedom of speech and against this kind of bullying, they signal their willingness to surrender and fall into line, accepting Sharia restrictions on speech.

Imagine how Rutgers would react if its Art Library had displayed, instead of this Jesus-on-a-dartboard “artwork,” a cartoon of Muhammad. The air would have been thick with cries of “Islamophobia.” Fragile Leftist students would be running for their safe spaces. The university would be instituting mandatory seminars designed to inculcate the proper “respect” that one must show for “The Other” so as to avoid charges of “racism” and “bigotry.”

The double standard is stark: Jesus crucified on a dartboard is art – and what’s more, it’s courageous. One Rutgers student chortled on Facebook that the dartboard “art” was “hilarious,” and crowed that “we don’t have to cater to the wills of the Church or any denomination of Christianity or religion.” Those who complained would be admonished: Don’t you respect the freedom of expression, you right-wing bigot?

A cartoon of Muhammad, on the other hand, even one as innocuous as the one in The Gleaner appears to have been — that’s an outrage. No one was crowing in that instance about not having to cater to the wills of the mosque. On the contrary, the message was clear: Don’t you respect Muslims as human beings, you right-wing bigot?

This is the kind of “respect” being irrationally violent will win you. Rutgers officials knew that Christians weren’t going to kill them, and that they could mock Christianity with impunity. They would only start blathering about “respect” when it comes to Islam. This respect won at the point of a sword does not bode well for the future of free expression in the West.

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Small town school district has students speaking 34 different languages!

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And, one in four students is in an ELL class.

We haven’t mentioned Lewiston much recently (no Somali kids have burned down apartment buildings there in the last few years).

This is your usual fluffy story about coming to America and I’m just posting it to tell you about the school system challenges your town will face if it “welcomes” refugees this year.

Trying out headscarves

Besides the expense to the school system, this family obviously entered the US illegally and are in Maine where the welfare is good for so-called ‘asylum seekers.’  They are hoping to persuade an immigration judge that they are legitimate refugees and they have been told to go to Maine to wait out the legal process.

BTW, the article tells us Dad had a job selling cellphones and computers throughout Europe, so why didn’t he simply take the kids on one of his trips to Europe and ask for asylum there?  There must be much more to his ‘story.’

From the Lewiston-Auburn Sun Journal:

LEWISTON — Joao Rodrigues and his children moved to Maine this past winter from Africa.

His children are among the city’s 1,374 students in the English Language Learner program. One out of every four Lewiston students is in the ELL program; most are Somali children, but ELL students speak a total of 34 languages.

[….]

Speaking Portuguese and communicating through an interpreter, he shared how he and his children fled their native Angola, a country of unrest and violence. They escaped to the Democratic Republic of the Congo before making their way to the United States. [“making their way” is code for arriving through questionable means—ed]

They arrived in New York in January with nothing. A pastor there recommended he take his family to Maine, where there are African communities and where he could get help.

See our very large archive on the Somali capital of New England—Lewiston—here.

And, click here, for much more on Maine the welfare magnet where the governor was trying to slow the giveaways to non-citizens, but not sure he ever succeeded.

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British Textbook Company Indoctrinating American and Florida’s Children

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“The British textbook company Pearson’s international business model and products are brainwashing U.S. and Florida students with religious and political indoctrination, revisionist U.S. history, pornography, and horrible math methodologies.” – Florida Citizens Alliance

Florida Citizens Alliance (FLCA)in a column titled Tell Pearson, PLC To Stop Indoctrinating Our Kids! writes:

Pearson, PLC is a British company that provides over 80% of all text books and on-line lesson plans to our children in Florida public schools. They are dedicated to brainwashing our U.S. and Florida students with religious and political indoctrination, revisionist U.S. history, pornography and horrible math methodologies. Several of their largest shareholders are the Arab Bank Corp and the two thugs running Libya. Furthermore, Pearson is committed to destructive high stakes testing and is heavily invested in standardized tests.

The story is even bigger than Florida and the United States. Pearson is an international company, chasing the multi-trillion dollar k-12 textbook, on-line lesson plan and huge standardized testing dollars gravy train on a global basis. They are intent on rolling out Common Core including its Common Core curriculum, high stakes testing and student profiling through aggressive data mining.

FLCA provides students, parents, teachers and concerned citizens an opportunity to send and email to Pearson, PLC. The email reads:

To Pearson PLC Board of Directors:

Your international business model and products are brainwashing our U.S. and Florida students with religious and political indoctrination, revisionist U.S. history, pornography, and horrible math methodologies. We demand you honor Florida Statutes FS 1003.42 and FS 847.011 to ensure historically accurate materials, stop the pornography and stop the political and religious indoctrination immediately.

Those readers wishing to contact Pearson’s Board of Directors may do so by clicking here.

ABOUT THE FLORIDA CITIZENS ALLIANCE

The Florida Citizens’ Alliance (FLCA) is a coalition of citizens and grassroots groups working together through education, outreach and community involvement to advance the ideals and principles of liberty. We believe these include but are not limited to individual rights, free markets, and limited government.

To learn more go here.

We Pay Millions to ‘Ghost Teachers’ Who Don’t Teach by Jason Bedrick

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The Philadelphia school district is in a near-constant state of financial crisis. There are many factors contributing to this sorry state — particularly its governance structure — but it is compounded by fiscal mismanagement. One particularly egregious example is paying six-figure salaries to the tune of $1.5 million a year to “ghost teachers” that do not teach. Pennsylvania Watchdog explains:

As part of the contract with the School District of Philadelphia, the local teachers union is permitted to take up to 63 teachers out of the classroom to work full-time for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. The practice, known as “release time” or “official time,” allows public school teachers to leave the classroom and continue to earn a public salary, benefits, pension and seniority.

These so-called ghost teachers perform a variety of jobs for the PFT, serving as either information officers for other teachers or carrying out the union’s political agenda.

“Teachers should be paid to teach,” attorney Kara Sweigart, who is arguing ghost teacher lawsuits for the Fairness Center, a free legal service for employees who feel they’ve been wronged by their unions, told Watchdog.

“At a time when school districts are hurting financially, districts should be devoting every tax dollar to support students,” she said, “not to pay the salaries of employees of a private political organization.”

According to public salary data available through Philadelphia city agencies, the school district is paying 16 ghost teachers $1.5 million this year. All of them are making at least $81,000.

PFT Vice President Arlene Kempin, who has been on release time since 1983, is among the highest paid at $108,062. Union head Jerry Jordan, who has also been on release time for more than 30 years, is earning $81,245, according to district payroll logs. The 16 ghost teachers on the books this year are making an average salary of almost $98,000.

The “ghost teacher” phenomenon is far from unique to Philly or even the education sector. Such “release time” subsidies for ghost teachers, policemen, firefighters, and bureaucrats of all stripes are common features of public-sector union contracts nationwide. Last month, a Yankee Institute report found that Connecticut provided unions with $4.1 million to subsidize 121,000 hours union-related activities, “the equivalent of more than a year’s worth of work for 50 full-time employees.” Meanwhile, the Goldwater Institute in Arizona is in the midst of a lawsuit against the city of Phoenix for unconstitutionally providing millions of dollars in release-time subsidies.

According to the most recent report from the federal Office of Personnel Management, the federal government paid more than $157 million in 2012 for federal employees to work for their unions for a total of 3,439,449 hours. And those are just the direct costs.

In his book, Understanding the Teacher Union Contract: A Citizen’s Handbook, former teacher union negotiator Myron Lieberman explained how difficult it is to account for the full amount of subsidies that taxpayers provide to the unions:

Most school board members are not aware of the magnitude of these subsidies. In school district budgets, the subsidies are never grouped together under the heading “Subsidies to the Union.” Instead, the subsidies are included in school district budgets under a variety of headings that may or may not refer to the union…

School districts pay for these subsidies from a variety of line items in the district budget: payments to substitute teachers, teacher salaries, and pension contributions, among others.

In most situations, the union subsidy is lumped together with other expenses paid for under the same line item; for example, the costs of hiring substitutes for teachers who are on released time for union business may be included in a budget line for substitutes that also covers substitutes for other reasons, such as replacing teachers on sick leave, personal leave, maternity/paternity leave, and so on.

Taxpayer dollars allocated for education should be spent on items and activities that assist student learning, not to promote the interests of private organizations (especially when their interests often collide with the interests of students). Union work should be paid out of funds the unions collect through dues and donations, not funds expropriated from unwilling and unwitting taxpayers.

Cross-posted from Cato.org.

Jason Bedrick

Jason Bedrick

Jason Bedrick is a policy analyst with the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom.

Grade Inflation Eats Away at the Meaning of College by George C. Leef

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The Year Was 2081 and Everyone Was Finally Above Average.

Every so often, the issue of grade inflation makes the headlines, and we are reminded that grades are being debased continuously.

That happened in late March when the two academics who have most assiduously studied grade inflation — Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy — provided fresh evidence on their site GradeInflation.com that grade inflation continues.

The authors state, “After 30 years of making incremental changes (in grading), the amount of rise has become so large that what’s happening becomes clear: mediocre students are getting higher and higher grades.”

In their database of over 400 colleges and universities covering the whole range of our higher education system, from large and prestigious universities to small, non-selective colleges, the researchers found not one where grades had remained level over the last 50 years. The overall rise in grades nationally has brought about a tripling of the percentage of A grades, although some schools have been much more “generous” than others.

Or, to look at it the other way, some schools have been much better than others in maintaining academic standards. For instance, Miami of Ohio, the University of Missouri, and Brigham Young have had low grade inflation. Why that has been the case would be worth investigating.

In North Carolina, Duke leads in grade inflation, followed closely by UNC. Wake Forest is in the middle of the pack, while UNC-Asheville has had comparatively little.

But why have American colleges and universities allowed, or perhaps even encouraged grade inflation? Why, as professor Clarence Deitsch and Norman Van Cott put it in this Pope Center piece five years ago, do we have “too many rhinestones masquerading as diamonds?”

Part of the answer, wrote Deitsch and Van Cott, is the fact that money is at stake.  “Professors don’t have to be rocket scientists to figure out that low grades can delay student graduation, thereby undermining state funding and faculty salaries,” they observed.

It might surprise Americans who believe that non-profit entities like colleges are not motivated by money and would allow honest academic assessment to be affected by concerns over revenue maximization, but they do.

But it is not just money that explains grade inflation. At least as important and probably more so is the pressure on faculty members to keep students happy.

History professor Chuck Chalberg put his finger on the problem in this article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Chalberg writes about a friend of his who had completed her Ph.D. in psychology and was working as a teaching assistant to a professor and graded the papers submitted by the undergraduates “with what she thought was an appropriate level of rigor.” But it was not appropriate, she soon learned. The professor “revised nearly all of the grades upward so that were left no failures, few C’s, and mostly A’s and B’s.”

Had she underappreciated the real quality of the work of the students? No, but, Chalberg continues, “the students thought that they were really, really, smart, and would have been quite angry and thrown some major tantrums if they got what they actually deserved.”

Thus, giving out high but undeserved grades is a way of avoiding trouble. That trouble could come from students who have an elevated and unrealistic view of their abilities and will complain about any low grade to school officials.

It could also come from their parents, who have been known to helicopter in and gripe to the administrators that young Emma or Zachary just can’t have a C and if it isn’t changed immediately, there will be serious repercussions.

Another possibility is that faculty will give out inflated grades to avoid conflict with those school administrators.

Low grades affect student retention and at many colleges the most important thing is to keep students enrolled. Back in 2008, Norfolk State University biology professor Stephen Aird lost his job because the administration was upset with him for having the nerve to grade students according to their actual learning rather than giving out undeserved grades just to keep them content. (I wrote about that pathetic case here.)

Could it be that students are getting better and deserve the higher grades they’re receiving?

You’d get an argument if you ran that explanation by Professor Ron Srigley, who teaches at the University of Prince Edward Island. In this thoroughly iconoclastic essay published in March, he stated, “Over the past fourteen years of teaching, my students’ grade-point averages have steadily gone up while real student achievement has dropped. Papers I would have failed ten years ago on the grounds that they were unintelligible … I now routinely assign grades of C or higher.”

Professor Srigley points to one factor that many other professors have observed — students simply won’t read. They aren’t in the habit of reading (due to falling K-12 standards) and rarely do assigned readings in college. “They will tell you that they don’t read because they don’t have to. They can get an A without ever opening a book,” he writes.

We also have good evidence that on average, today’s college students spend much less time in studying in homework than students used to. In this 2010 study, Professor Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks found that college students today spend only about two thirds as much time as they did some fifty years ago. That’s hardly consistent with the notion that students today are really earning all those A grades.

On the whole, today’s students are receiving substantially higher grades for substantially lower academic gains than in the past.

Grade inflation is consistent with the customer friendly, “college experience” model that has mushroomed alongside the old, “you’ve come here to learn” college model. For students who merely want the degree to which many believe themselves entitled, rigorous grading is as unwelcome as cold showers and spartan meals would be at a luxury resort. Leaders at most colleges know that if they don’t satisfy their student-customers, they will find another school that will.

Exactly what is the problem, though?

Grade inflation could be seen as harmful to the downstream parties, the future employers of students who coast through college with high grades but little intellectual benefit. Doesn’t grade inflation trick them into over-estimating the capabilities of students?

That is a very minor concern. For one thing, it seems to be the case that employers don’t really pay much attention to college transcripts. In this NAS piece, Academically Adrift author Richard Arum writes, “Examining post-college transitions of recent graduates, Josipa Roksa and I have found that course transcripts are seldom considered by employers in the hiring process.”

That’s predictable. People in business have come to expect grade inflation just as they have come to expect monetary inflation. Naturally, they take measures to avoid bad hiring decisions just as they take measures to avoid bad investment decisions. They have better means of evaluating applicants than merely looking at GPAs.

Instead, the real harm of grade inflation is that it is a fraud on students who are misled into thinking that they are more competent than they really are.

It makes students believe they are good writers when in fact they are poor writers. It makes them believe they can comprehend books and documents when they can barely do so. It makes them think they can treat college as a Five Year Party or a Beer and Circus bacchanalia because they seem to be doing fine, when they’re actually wasting a lot of time and money.

Dishonest grading from professors is as bad as dishonest health reports from doctors who just want their patients to feel happy would be. The truth may be unpleasant, but it’s better to know it than to live in blissful ignorance.

This article was originally published by the Pope Center.

George C. LeefGeorge C. Leef

George Leef is the former book review editor of The Freeman. He is director of research at the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

Why Schools Don’t Learn by Kevin Currie-Knight

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The last 100 years have seen drastic technological innovations — from the way we communicate to the way we travel to the way we consume entertainment. One thing that hasn’t changed is the way we do school. Teacher, chalkboard, lesson, test, move up a grade, repeat.

Maybe the best argument for school choice is that we have no idea what kind of innovations could improve education until we allow radical competition. After all, if government ran the entertainment industry, we might still be watching black and white movies and listening to phonograph records. Instead, we stream films and songs online through a galaxy of services from Netflix and Hulu to Pandora and Spotify.

Where We Are

Think about how many features of our existing education system are wrongly treated as inevitable:

  1. Students are segregated by age. This means that all students have the same amount of time to learn a certain amount of stuff in nth grade before we test them to see if they can move to grade n + 1.
  2. We divide our school curricula into discrete subjects: math, science, language, history, arts, physical education, and so on. Students learn the math required to do science in math class and read about history in history class but read literature in English class.
  3. The school day starts in the early morning and runs until mid-afternoon, and the school year is a fairly big chunk of 175 to 180 days (with a few small breaks) followed by a two- to three-month summer break.

These are just three routine features of school that we barely notice, let alone question.

Once we do question them, alternatives quickly come to mind. One could imagine, for instance, a school that didn’t teach math, science, and history as separate disciplines but found creative ways to teach them in combination — or schools that aren’t automatically structured by age.

School choice allows schools to experiment with different curricula and teaching approaches, but it also allows them to experiment by modifying some of those features that we often take for granted but probably shouldn’t.

How We Got Here

To fully appreciate the need for experimentation in educational spaces, let me introduce two terms, one from behavioral psychology, the other from economics. The first is status quo bias, which sounds like what it means. Behavioral psychologists have discovered in people a marked (often unconscious and uncritical) acceptance of the way things are. When we experience the world a certain way, we often become attached to that way without even realizing our attachment. Of course students are divided into grades based roughly on age. Of course we teach science and history in different classes.

The second term, from political science, is path dependence. Path dependence is the idea that certain things come to be the way they are because past decisions affect the range of available subsequent choices. Picture a business spending lots of money on a certain software program that everyone at the company learns. The business and employees will become so invested in the current program that it will be hard to switch to a different one later. Even if a much better program comes along, the cost of switching may become prohibitively high, so the company will stick with what it knows.

Path dependence caused the unquestioned features of our education system to evolve the way they did. Why are schools open in fall, winter, and spring but closed during summer? The myth is that this schedule has to do with the days when kids were expected to work on farms, but really the shape of the school calendar is a vestige of the pre-air-conditioning era.

With widespread air conditioning, why do we continue to adjourn for summers? Because we have structured so much of our social fabric on the idea that kids and teachers have summers off. Theme parks, summer vacation destinations, and other business interests depend on kids having summer breaks. Parents plan for their children to be off during the summer. Summer break has a cultural inertia akin to a company’s commitment to legacy software. Once we get used to schooling done a certain way, we come to think of that as how school should be done, which ensures that even things like summer break continue well past their usefulness. That’s path dependence.

Status quo bias factors in when we become so used to schools having a summer break (or operating from early morning to mid-afternoon, Monday through Friday) that we fail to think of this system as anything but the way it has to be.

The Way Forward

Surpassing the educational equivalent of legacy software is precisely what makes school choice important. Competition allows some people to experiment with different ways of doing things while others can stick with what’s familiar. Markets also disrupt the kind of lock-in that path dependence often creates. While it may be costly for our imagined business to switch to the new software, other businesses may find it easier, and the market will help decide which decision was wiser.

One could object, of course, that new alternative schools — with their different schedules of operation or different approaches to curricula — will get things wrong, to the detriment of students. Yes, some schools will try what ultimately fails. But unlike big centralized bureaucracies, businesses learn quickly from their failures and adapt — or they go broke. Contrast that process to the time it takes for government to abandon a program everyone knows isn’t working.

Unless you think the current school system is doing fine, the only way forward is through innovation, and innovation requires the sort of experimentation that happens naturally in the free market.

Kevin Currie-KnightKevin Currie-Knight

Kevin Currie-Knight teaches in East Carolina University’s Department of Special Education, Foundations, and Research. His website is KevinCK.net. He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.

VIDEO: Boston Jews divided on Saudi/UAE anti-Israel materials in public schools

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Last weekend, we posted on Facebook the background of controversial anti-Semitic vandalism in the Boston suburb of Newton, Massachusetts.  The topic at the core of a heated public meeting convened by Mayor Setti Warren.  A video produced by the team at Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT) provided background on the rancorous public meeting in Newton. The Facebook post of the APT video garnered over 60 shares from FB pages across the U.S., Europe and Israel.  It provided documented evidence of the use of Saudi and UAE funded anti-Semitic texts and Arab World Studies notebook laced with pro-Palestinian propaganda materials and maps.  We noted that APT had been in the forefront of uncovering the use of these materials by the Newton public schools since discovery in 2011.  They contended their removal has yet to be independently confirmed. Watch it here:

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Newton, Massachusetts Mayor Setti Warren.

A second FB post contained a Wicked Local Newton report noted the acrimony at the Newton public meeting:

Emotions were running high at a community discussion organized by Mayor Setti Warren Thursday night in response to several incidents of anti-Semitism and racism in the schools, with some in the overflowing audience apparently frustrated with the city’s response to the incidents as well as with the event’s tone.

A panel of speakers, including the mayor, a civil rights law expert, a child psychiatrist, teachers and students, spoke of the need for dialogue around discrimination in Newton, addressing issues of racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and discrimination against people with disabilities.

But some Jewish residents, including many with direct familial or personal ties to the Holocaust, wished the forum was more focused on recognizing and denouncing the anti-Semitic graffiti in particular. There was also a group of activists upset about “anti-Israel” teaching materials they feel contributed to the anti-Semitic incidents.

“The idea that we’re supposed to have a dialogue with people who put swastikas up after the Holocaust is absurd,” said resident Steven Katz, a professor of Jewish Holocaust Studies at Boston University. “And this evening is not supposed to be about liberal values. It’s supposed to be about anti-Semitism.”

Tina Glik, a resident and parent, said she was concerned that “as clearly as the message was written, ‘Burn the Jews,’ we came here to listen to: let’s be nice, let’s talk about racism, let’s talk about discrimination against gay people, let’s talk about anything else but anti-Semitism.”

Warren reiterated that he took any instances of anti-Semitism “very seriously,” calling anti-Semitic graffiti found at F. A. Day Middle School “despicable” and “horrible.” He pledged that all potential hate crimes would be investigated, with the perpetrators punished. Anti-Semitic graffiti was also discovered at Newton North High School multiple times during the past several months.

 The Boston Globe  initial report of the acrimonious meeting  alleged that the  protesters at the public  meeting had ‘disrespected’  an articulate African American woman who drew attention to her son’s isolation at the Newton High school as evidence of racism, “Activists disrupt Newton forum on prejudice:”

The group of activists was led by Newton resident Charles Jacobs, who has had a longtime grievance with the city’s schools about what he says are pro-Palestinian and anti-Semitic text books.

[…]

Newton resident Janet Yassen said it was her first time attending this type of community meeting, and she came because she was interested in hearing what Warren had to say.

But what she saw from some members of the crowd “disgusted” her, she said.

“It was embarrassing, it was awful,” she said.

After hearing the students, who at the end of the evening mingled with some of the most vocal in the crowd, Yassen said she was heartened.

“The young people were phenomenal,” she said. “For them to confront the disrespect shown by some of the adults was really courageous.”

Following the ‘rowdy’ meeting two Boston Jewish community groups, the Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the Boston Jewish Federation’s affiliate, the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and the local chapter of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) seized upon the Globe  report that an African American woman had been ‘heckled’ by protesters at the public meeting.  The joint AJC/JCRC news release, while noting the persistent problems of anti-Semitic materials in school programs, wrongly criticized  the protesters:

To our dismay, a group of activists – who have been identified in the media as members of the Jewish community – disrupted the proceedings. An African-American mother was heckled while discussing her own child’s experience of racism. There were loud contentions that the only concern worthy of discussion was anti-Semitism. The overall affect was to shift the focus of the meeting from concerns about anti-Semitism, as well as racism and homophobia to the conduct of the meeting itself.

The escalation and obfuscation was amped up by The Boston Globe that seized upon the joint JCRC/AJC news release  in an article that went viral via the AP and  internet outlets like Yahoo news and other social media,  “Jewish groups condemn ‘disrespect’ at Newton forum:”

Leaders of two Jewish organizations on Monday condemned the behavior of a group of activists at a community meeting in Newton last week, saying the struggle against anti-Semitism must be part of a larger effort to build “respectful tolerant communities.”

In a joint statement, the American Jewish Committee Boston and the Jewish Community Relations Council said the activities of those who disrupted a meeting at City Hall on Thursday night “do not represent the broader sentiments of the Jewish community.”

This time, Jacobs of APT was able to fire back at both the Globe and AJC/JCRC accusations in the latest Globe article:

Charles Jacobs, the leader of the activists, said in an e-mail to the Globe that he was “quite surprised” by the statement.

Jacobs, founder of Americans for Peace and Tolerance, has had a longtime grievance with the city’s schools about what he says are pro-Palestinian and anti-Semitic textbooks.

“Given that Jews in Europe and in the Middle East are hunted, hounded and murdered because of an anti-Semitism which falsely portrays the world’s only Jewish state as among the cruelest of nations . . . and given that the Saudis and United Arab Emirates have been caught funding ‘lessons’ that taught these things in the Newton schools . . . and given that (Newton) School Superintendent David Fleishman was forced to remove some of this material and yet told the people at the meeting that he knew nothing about it, I think the meeting was, under these circumstance, quite civil,” Jacobs wrote.

However, the AJC/JCRC with the complicity of this second Globe article continued to convey the false information by School Superintendent Fleischman that the woman at the Newton public meeting had been ‘disrespected:’

“Moreover, it is hardly a secret that pernicious elements exist that are seeking to import anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias into American school curriculums. We share this concern. However, it does not justify conduct that was manifest at this meeting or the disrespect that was shown to neighbors, who also had difficult experiences of their own to discuss.”

Fleischman, who was booed at last Thursday’s meeting and required a police escort to leave, retorted in an email on April 11, 2016 cited by The Globe saying:

In an interview Friday, Fleishman said that Jacobs’s complaints about the Newton curriculum being biased against Israel “are issues from the past,” which were resolved in 2013.

“They have our entire curriculum, our faculty at both high schools spent hours putting together all the material, unit by unit, in response to freedom of information requests,” Fleishman said of Jacobs’s group.

Fleishman sent an e-mail to faculty on Monday discussing the events of the forum.

“What was intended to be a community discussion to ensure Newton is a welcoming and inclusive place for all turned into a display of disrespectful and uncivil behavior,” Fleishman wrote. “Some in the audience were particularly insensitive toward a Newton parent who courageously shared a story of racism faced by her son.”

Jacobs and APT responded to Fleischman’s allegation, Tuesday with video documentation suggesting that both Fleishman and The AJC/JCRC were wrong about the alleged “heckling”. The Globe proceeded to soft pedal it:

On Tuesday afternoon, Jacobs’s organization issued a statement denying that the woman had been heckled.

In a video of the community meeting posted on the city’s website, the woman talks about her son’s experiences with racism. Twice she is interrupted, prompting someone in the crowd to call out, “Let her speak.”

The JCRC/AJC and The Globe were upended by the APT cell phone video that captured evidence that the woman had been, if anything, respected by attendees at the public hearing.  Watch the You tube video of the woman’s presentation at the Newton public meeting.

Problem is that the JCRC/AJC and The Globe reports have not been challenged on the lack of credibility, let alone credulity.

Jacobs has been warning for years that establishment Jewish organizations have failed to shift to the new situation Jews face: anti-Israelism, the new anti-Semitism. Now Jews are hated for their “apartheid state,” Israel.   The radical left/radical Muslim alliance, the red-green alliance is hunting and killing Jews in Israel and Europe. They intimidate Jews on American college campuses with eviction notices, fake Apartheid walls, simulated border checks and die –ins, especially during Israel Apartheid Weeks. The Jewish establishment Jacobs contends fled from this new anti-Semitic alliance. They still want to fight the old anti-Semitism, neo- Nazis, White Aryan nation and KKK racists. They cower and are confused in the face of a leftist anti-Zionism and patently Islamist anti-Semitism that Jews in Europe fear will cause them to leave, a second time. Jacobs has been hounded by what passes for the Jewish Establishment for years because of his position. This latest episode in Newton he thinks may be their push-back

We asked Jacobs for his views on the dispute. Here is what we wrote us:

Why would the Boston Jewish leadership not insist on seeing the curriculum, after Newton School Superintendent Fleishman was forced to remove a Saudi funded anti-Semitic lesson that taught students that Jews in Israel murder Arab women in jail? After they have all seen the video which shows those libels.

It should not be forgotten that the Jews of Europe are hounded, hunted and murdered because of anti-Israelism.  American Jewish students are harassed and intimidated on campuses because of the same ideology that is being taught in the Newton schools. Newton has security at its synagogues for the very same reason: anti-Israelism. Yet some of Newton’s top Jewish leaders prefer to circle the wagons, defend their friends and deny the truth.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of Newton, Massachusetts Mayor Setti Warren faces Dr. Charles Jacobs of Americans for Peace and Tolerance, taken on April 7, 2016. Source: Katherine Taylor, Boston Globe

If your school allows ‘Day of Silence’, keep your child home this Friday

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On Friday, April 15, high schools (and many middle schools) across the country will be hosting the LGBT movement’s annual “Day of Silence.”

During this all-day event, student activists and even school officials encourage students to be silent for the entire day as a sign of solidarity with the international LGBT movement. Students are encouraged to wear special pro-homosexual badges, stickers, and bracelets – which are often handed out at the school entrances that day. There are also pro-LGBT posters in the hallways, handouts, and even workshops.

Although the adult activists claim that the “Day of Silence” is put together by “students,” it is in fact organized behind the scenes by adults with the enthusiastic cooperation of school officials. They use materials and instructions from a national homosexual activist group.

Parents must. Please join the national effort to restore to public education a proper understanding of the role of government-subsidized schools.

You can actively oppose this hijacking of the classroom for political purposes and help de-politicize the learning environment by calling your child out of school if your child’s school allows students to remain silent during instructional time on the “Day of Silence.”

If students will be permitted to remain silent, parents can express their opposition most effectively by calling their children out of school on the “Day of Silence” and sending letters of explanation to their administrators, their children’s teachers, and all school board members.

TAKE ACTION

1.  Call your local schools and ask whether they permit students or teachers to remain silent in the classroom on “Day of Silence.” IMPORTANT: Do not ask any administrator, school board member, or teacher if the school sponsors, endorses, or supports DOS. Schools do not technically sponsor the Day of Silence. Technically, it is students, often students in the gay-straight alliance, who sponsor it. Many administrators will tell you that they do not sponsor the DOS when, in fact, they do permit students and sometimes even teachers to remain silent during instructional time. Also ask administrators whether they permit teachers to create lesson plans to accommodate student silence.

2.  Find out what date the event is planned for your school. (The national date in 2016 is Friday, April 15, but some schools observe DOS on a different date).

3.  Inform the school of your intention to keep your children home on that date and explain why.

Visit www.doswalkout.net for complete information on opposing the “Day of Silence.”

RELATED ARTICLES:

Tennessee School Board stands up to LGBT pressure — protects students from high school “gay” club.

Missouri Attempts to Send Religious Liberty Bill Straight to the People

Mississippi Is on the Right Side of History

Big Sports Benches People of Faith

Radical Muslim Schools opening on U.S. Military Bases

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CoralAcademyofScience2SchoolsThe Hill’s Robert R. Amsterdam asked an important question in his article “Why should Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen operate charter schools on U.S. Military bases?” Amsterdam writes:

A secretive Islamic movement is trying to infiltrate the U.S. military by establishing and operating publicly-funded charter schools targeted toward children of American service personnel.

That charge may sound like a conspiracy theory from the lunatic fringe, but it is real and it is happening right now. The most immediate threat is in Nevada, where Coral Academy of Science Las Vegas (CASLV) is currently negotiating with the United States Air Force to locate a charter school at Nellis Air Force Base, with classes starting this fall. What is not widely known is that CASLV is part of a nationwide organization of charter schools and other businesses headed by Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen, a reclusive but influential Imam living under self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania to avoid criminal prosecution in his native Turkey.

Our law firm has been engaged by the Republic of Turkey – a key NATO ally in a hotbed region – to conduct a wide-ranging investigation into the operations and geopolitical influence of the Gülen organization, which is behind the Coral Academy of Science and over 140 other public charter schools scattered across 26 American states. Our investigation, still in its early stages, reveals that the Gülen organization uses charter schools and affiliated businesses in the U.S. to misappropriate and launder state and federal education dollars, which the organization then uses for its own benefit to develop political power in this country and globally.

Gulen Charter Schools in the USA provides this list of Gulen Charter Schools in the United States:

Socialist Education Hurts Students Long after the Classroom by Jeffrey A. Miron

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According to a forthcoming paper by economists Nichola Fuchs Schundeln (Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt) and Paolo Masella (University of Sussex):

Political regimes influence contents of education and criteria used to select and evaluate students. We study the impact of a socialist education on the likelihood of obtaining a college degree and on several labor market outcomes by exploiting the reorganization of the school system in East Germany after reunification.

[We find that] … an additional year of socialist education decreases the probability of obtaining a college degree and affects longer-term male labor market outcomes. 

East Germany’s control of education was far greater than what occurs now in the United States. But the East German example merits attention, especially given mounting pressure in the United States for greater federal control of education.

Cross-posted from Cato.org.

Jeffrey A. MironJeffrey A. Miron

Jeffrey Miron is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University, as well as a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

The Joy of Witlessness

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joy karega facebook photoOberlin College’s assistant professor, Joy Karega, teaches Rhetoric and Composition.  Whether pitifully ignorant of Islam or intentionally following a path of rhetoric and propaganda, a typical selection of her Facebook posts blames the Jews for 9/11 and for the Paris massacre, and claims that ISIS is run by Israel and America.

Not only is this untrue, libelous and offensive, but it is also amoral and dangerous; her lies could be inciting impressionable students to jihadi violence, thereby endangering Jewish students. Lacking scruples, she has responded to reasonable criticism with vitriol and defiance, choosing instead to ignore facts and engage in revisionist history. She further exacerbates the damage by assigning readings that explore the hazy realm of social justice, rejecting accuracy and true justice.  How can an instructor so focused on accusations and mischief-making be expected to positively inspire the student writer’s creativity?  

At the heart of her illogical behavior one might well find the seeds of envy and resentment. Her contempt reflects the Jew-hatred that is found in the Koran. The Jews were the ones who brought ethical and intellectual monotheism to the world and continue to create, invent, and make improvements to our everyday lives in innumerable ways, earning Nobel awards out of proportion to their small number, while Islamists remain fixed in the seventh century, continuing their offenses, bloodshed, destruction, and looting wherever they go.

  • The Islamic Arabs started the African Slave Trade; Islam and Slavery (www.inthenameofallah.org) “The greatest tragedy is that most of the descendants of the African slave trade are totally ignorant of the actual facts. The worst, most inhumane and most diabolical institution of the black African slave trade was initiated, refined, perpetrated and implemented by the Mohammedan Arab and later aided and abetted by the Black Congress to Mohammed and Islam. . . Slavery was not created by the white races; the very word slavery comes from the Arab word Ab, meaning ‘slave of Allah,’ as in ‘Abdullah.’ All blacks are called abi, feudal or forced slaves. . . Arabs institutionalized, systematized, and religiously-sanctioned slave trade on a global scale – 1400 million over 14 centuries (and still not abolished). The Koran allows taking of slaves as booty, which is most of the human population.  Holy wars, jihad, are not holy; they are designed to plunder, slaughter, rape, subjugate and rob other humans of their wealth, produce, and freedom.”

Karega may be conflicted championing those who would have enslaved her merely for her skin color, and must opt for a change of narrative, a fictitious one in which she lays the responsibility on the Jewish people. The following solid facts about Israel’s acceptance of Jews worldwide, without regard to superficialities, may help her to escape from the fictitious world she has fashioned for herself.

  • “Operation Moses” was Israel’s mission to rescue the Ethiopian Jews who had long dreamed of returning to their ancient homeland. Once recognized as Diaspora Jews in 1975, and despite being forbidden to leave Ethiopia and the hardships, dangers and violence along the way, they stealthily trickled their way on foot to the Sudanese border between 1975 and 1984, where they were held in camps until Israel could covertly retrieve them and fly them to a better life in Israel. Eight thousand Ethiopian Jews, 1500 of them parentless children and youths, were resettled and are now living life as Israeli citizens. The operation was halted when the Sudanese government feared Arab reprisals.
  • This week, the last of the Yemenite Jews (19 of 200) were saved from a war zone and covertly brought to Israel.

Offering no evidence whatsoever, Karega openly denies that Islamists are responsible for the 9/11 attack. A psychologist may suggest that, being subconsciously ashamed of the Moslems, she projects their depravity onto Israel, but Karega’s naïve efforts to transfer blame are derided by the Moslem leadership and ISIS, who proudly distribute films for world recognition of their beheadings, burnings, and tortures. She cannot face the ugly truth that Islam is a religion of war.  

  • Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Sheikh, has proudly taken ownership of his successful attack on the 1993 World Trade Center. No ordinary terrorist, he holds a Juris Doctor from al-Azhar University in Cairo, with a specialty in Islamic law, Sharia. He has quoted Islamic scripture precisely, proving that Allah commands Moslems to wage jihad worldwide. There are 164 similar verses within the Koran that mandate Moslems to “fight those who believe not in Allah . . . fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them.”
  • The foundational statement of the Hamas Charter of the Muslim Brotherhood says, “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” Hatred for the Jews supplies the reason for Hamas’ existence, continuing the age-old struggle of evil against good. For every Israeli innovation in medical advancement; improved technology for communication, water, agriculture, etc., and Israel’s outreach as First Responders to countries in adversity, there are hordes of Moslems who are torturing, enslaving, raping and killing in the name of their ideology.   
  •  Mohamed Sa’id Ramadan al-Buti, Egyptian scholar from al-Azhar University, wrote, “The Holy War (Islamic Jihad) . . . is basically an offensive war.”We are in the midst of jihad, when a Muslim fights an infidel without treaty to make the word of Allah . . . forcing him to fight or invading his land.  . .”
  • Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (1928), wrote, “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.” 
  •  The Ayatolla Khomeini, leading Moslem of the 20th century, said, “Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those who say this are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers. . .”

Thus Karega is either quite “witless” or she has taken the path of civilizational jihad, joining the bloodless propaganda war. Spending her time writing hate material, leading a life without joy and compassion, she is fulfilling the Islamic principle of preferring death over life – preferring the lives of illiterate, violent males and emotionally and physically imprisoned/shrouded females, over life as we value it.  Compare their ideology with the life lived by Israelis, the advanced little country that recently earned the title of Top 5 Happiest Countries in the World, according to the new Better Life Index report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).  (Under Obama’s watch, the US dropped to 13.)

It is reasonable to suggest that Karega is more than just witless. Her hate mongering and abuse are reserved only for Jews and Israel, accusing them of imagined crimes and absolving Moslems of actual crimes. Her immaturity, malice, bigotry, and fanaticism do not conform with freedom of speech, as specified by The Supreme Court’s established complex framework on the rule of false statements of facts, which can be subject to civil or criminal liability. Common limitations on speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, incitement, fighting words, public security, public order, public nuisance, and oppression, under the harm principle, all of which appear to apply to this instructor.  (Others are pornography, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, non-disclosure agreements, right to privacy, right to be forgotten, campaign finance reform, and perjury.)

Neither is Karega alone in her so-called witlessness. College officials who ignore the enmity and fail to protect the Jewish students from the abuser are complicit; they are also supporting the advancement of Sharia over America’s democracy. The College’s President Kislov has passively submitted to the Islamic ideology that demands supremacy. He remains a spineless failure, inept and silent, allowing the invectives to proliferate unchecked, which will encourage the “moderates” to join the ranks of the jihadi oppressors in their abuse of an unprotected prey. If he cannot defend his position of leadership and protect the students from Jew-hatred, he should step down. If he lacks the integrity and courage to safeguard the school’s citizens from verbal or physical discomfort, taking tuition fees from parents who believe their children are in a safe and scholarly environment, and if he cannot control a vicious renegade instructor, then he is not the man for the job.

RELATED ARTICLE: Oberlin College Professor Blames Jews for Paris Massacre and Much More

RELATED VIDEO: Palestinian Incitement Exposed

VIDEO: Terrorists and Their Textbooks

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What do the Boston Bombers have to do with a Holt McDougal textbook titled “Modern World History: Patterns of Interaction” used in their high school?

This brief film illustrates how Islam-biased content in K-12 history and geography textbooks can indoctrinate and radicalize our children, causing some of them to evolve into homegrown terrorists. By quietly getting major textbook publishers to include language that enhances Islam, while demeaning Christianity and Judaism, Islamists are attempting to win the hearts and minds of America’s middle- and high-school students.

In the film, Citizens for National Security (CFNS) connects the dots between our country’s classrooms and acts of terrorism.

RELATED ARTICLE: Dealing with Terrorism without Falling into its Trap

Frat Boy’s Visit to North Korea Speaks Volumes About Our Education System

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Kids coming out of our public educational systems and some private schools are not being taught the bedrock truths of liberty versus the political systems based on control, like Socialism and Communism. Regrettably, parents haven’t instilled an appreciation of America and her foundational truths into a generation who soon will be leading this country, and therefore have left them ignorant decision makers.

The product of these failures is evident in the life of a young University of Virginia frat boy who decided to go to one of the most dangerous countries and allegedly misbehave without considering the ramifications. Assuming the parents picked up the tab, makes them equally responsible for encouraging naïve choices.

According to The Daily Mail, Otto Warmbier, 21 years old, allegedly stole a banner of a political slogan from the restricted, staff-holding area of the Yanggakdo International Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea, while touring during New Years with the Young Pioneers Tours based in China. Much to his astonishment, the North Korean government wasn’t laughing. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in a prison camp for the prank.

Maybe Otto wasn’t taught that all countries aren’t like America when it comes to human rights.The majority of kids these days are learning instead what is wrong with America, and how we should tolerate other cultures instead of being proud of who we are as a country.  In reality, aside from the obvious abortion issue, we actually value basic human rights.

No, what our kids learn in school and universities around the country is an affinity for all cultures except for our own, all other forms of economies except for capitalism. All other religions besides Christianity and Judaism are to be revered and emulated.

If you ask most high school and college age kids these days what they think about our country, you definitely don’t get a sense of pride in America or the appreciation for a capitalist society. Many kids have a leaning towards Bernie Sanders and his socialism.

They believe in giving to the “greater good” when in fact many don’t believe in a foundation of truth that is Biblically based, and couldn’t tell you what the greater good actually is, but these kids think it would be fine to give the majority of their paychecks to it so that everyone will be equal. It certainly sounds like Karl Marx in Reflections of a Young Man on The Choice of a Profession. In it he stated,

“History calls those men the greatest who have ennobled themselves by working for the common good.”

Our educational system has produced  a generation of young people who aren’t prepared for the real world. Teachers are inhibited from bringing up many issues and current events because it leads into “gray” areas that aren’t allowed to be discussed because of political correctness. As a result our students don’t understand the reality of what is occurring across the globe, not to mention in their own back yards.

Ohio governor, and Republican presidential candidate, John Kasich stated this in a letter about Otto,

“American citizens must be allowed to travel abroad without the risk of being arrested arbitrarily and then held hostage for the purposes of ransom, the forced reopening of diplomatic negotiations or acts designed to antagonize the United States,”

Tell me Kasich, why would any country, who isn’t our ally, be expected to treat an American citizen with respect and dignity? The North Koreans are known for their lack of human rights, and if one chooses to travel in their country and allegedly break the law, it increases their risk of being detained. I’d go further to say that our country has lost much respect throughout the world  in the last decade which makes foreign travel riskier in many countries.

North Korea doesn’t consider the individual and his God given freedom, but only the collective and their responsibility to the State. The DPRK is not America, but in time with those in leadership positions who think working for the greater good is the direction we should go, we just might become like the Communist State.

Our education may be failing to equip young people to face an increasingly hostile world, but parents can counter that by continuing or immediately beginning to teach them not only to embrace the freedom we still have as Americans, but that our liberty is worth fighting to preserve.

General Douglas MacArthur’s title of his speech to the people of Japan on May 3rd, 1948 certainly rings true today.

“No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom, unless he be vigilant in its preservation.”

If, and when, Otto Warmbrier ever returns home, he will probably agree.

Obama’s former DOE Secretary Wanted More Mayoral Control of Public Schools Nationwide

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Not long after President Obama brought former Chicago Public Schools (CPS) CEO Arne Duncan to Washington, D.C., to become U.S. Secretary of Education, Duncan spouted out this March 31, 2009, declaration regarding his desire to establish mayoral control over more school systems. As NBC Chicago reports:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Tuesday that mayors should take control of big-city school districts where academic performance is suffering.

Duncan said mayoral control provides the strong leadership and stability needed to overhaul urban schools.

Mayors run the schools in fewer than a dozen big cities; only seven have full control over management and operations. That includes Chicago, where Duncan headed the school system until joining the Obama administration.

Speaking at a forum with mayors and superintendents, Duncan promised to help more mayors take over.

“At the end of my tenure, if only seven mayors are in control, I think I will have failed,” Duncan said.

He offered to do whatever he can to make the case. “I’ll come to your cities,” Duncan said. “I’ll meet with your editorial boards. I’ll talk with your business communities. I will be there.”

To my knowledge, no school system has been placed under mayoral control since Duncan was appointed as U.S. Secretary of Education in December 2008. Certainly there was no rush for U.S. cities to place their education systems under control of a mayor. And though there is a lot more about Duncan to which one might tie failure (not the least of which are his coercive No Child left Behind waivers), let us consider a marvelous irony about mayoral control in Duncan’s own backyard of Chicago, Illinois:

On March 03, 2016, the Illinois House passed a bill to convert CPS’s mayorally-appointed school board into an elected board. The legislation, HB 4268, sponsored by Rep. Richard Markwell (D-Chicago) passed by a vote of 110-4 and is currently in the Senate. From the article:

The bill would partition the city into 20 local districts and a 21st board member would be elected at large as president. Each would serve an initial five-year term if elected on March 20, 2018, then four years each to coincide with municipal elections.

The legislation also addresses a few regular criticisms of the appointed board by pushing at least half of the elected board’s meetings until after hours so working parents and community members can attend.

Some believe that the Senate might not get to act on HB 4268 because of addressing Illinois’ state budget crisis. Still, what is remarkable about HB 4268 are the numerous House sponsors the bill has garnered along the way– 44 co-sponsors in all– and all Democrats– the same party affiliation as Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Duncan praises mayoral-run districts for their top-down control– which logically appeals to a guy who held states ransom via Title I funds connected to his NCLB waivers. From Duncan’s 2009 NBC spiel:

Duncan told The Associated Press that urban schools need someone who is accountable to voters and driving all of a city’s resources behind children.

“Part of the reason urban education has struggled historically is you haven’t had that leadership from the top,” he said.

“Where you’ve seen real progress in the sense of innovation, guess what the common denominator is? Mayoral control,” Duncan said.

I do not know of anyone who would describe what Emanuel has done to CPS as “progress” and certainly not as “innovative.”

Furthermore, Emanuel made sure he was not “accountable to voters” by suppressing evidence of the Laquan McDonald shooting until after his runoff election against Chuy Garcia on April 07, 2015.

As of February 01, 2016, Emanuel’s approval rating hit a record low of 27 percent. As WGN-TV reports:

According to the poll, only 27% of Chicagoans approve of the job he is doing.  41% believe he should resign.  55% would support legislation to allow a Chicago mayor to be recalled.

59% of those surveyed say Emanuel is not honest and trustworthy. 70% believe his administration is not transparent. Only 25% believe Emanuel is in touch with people like them.

The mayor’s slide in the polls has accelerated as the result of his handling of the investigation into the police shooting death of teenager Laquan McDonald.  A police dashcam video that shows McDonald being shot 16 times was not released until last Spring, after Emanuel was re-elected.

58% of the poll respondents believe the mayor was not justified in withholding the release of the video; 74% don’t believe his statements about the shooting.

985 registered Chicago voters were polled between January 20 and January 28.  The poll has a margin of error of 3.2%.

Looks like Emanuel is losing his mayoral control on many fronts.

As for the condition of CPS under his (and his appointed board’s) control, Emanuel is also taking a hit. As HB 4268 co-sponsor Greg Harris (D- Chicago) notes on his web page circa November 2015:

There is only one school district in the State of Illinois that does NOT have an elected school board, and that is the Chicago Public Schools.  Currently all members of the Chicago Board of Education are appointed by Mayor and are not accountable to the parents, students or communities they serve. It is time for a change. That is why I am proud to cosponsor HB 4268 which would change Chicago’s school board from appointees to an elected school board.

We know about the recent pay-to-play scandals rocking CPS. But for our neighborhoods there are so many other reasons that we need to take back control of our schools. We have seen our neighborhood schools losing resources for enrichment programs such as music, art, sports, foreign languages, advanced placement and special education. This year, CPS is proposing over $8.7 million in cuts to schools in our area.

It is also worth noting that at the same time the Board is cutting our schools and asking for a property tax increase, we will be paying $238 million in termination fees to banks and investors to get us out of interest rate swaps and other financial deals that the CPS Board itself instigated.

Harris posted the above appeal right around the time of the CPS scandal related to a federal investigation and guilty plea of former CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett and Emanuel’s withholding emails related to the incident.

Add to the above the following observations regarding an Emanuel-controlled board by Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis in the March 03, 2016, NBC article:

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis has complained for years that the appointed board rarely listens to teachers and families when imposing decisions — or it wouldn’t have closed 50 schools or rubber-stamped a no-bid contract deal that since ousted the CEO and might land her in prison.

“Nearly one year ago, 90 percent of Chicago voters expressed their support for an elected school board, and now, the city’s students and their families are closer to ending the devastation of mayoral control and Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s handpicked Board of Education,” Lewis said. “The CTU now calls on the Senate to pass this bill and give the voters what is long overdue — democracy in our education.”

Mayoral control has not worked in Chicago. Whether or not Duncan admits as much in 2016 is irrelevant. He is currently in no position to advocate for mayoral control.

However.

Illinois should stay alert to Duncan’s December 2015 return to Illinois and the possibility of his doing so in order to qualify to run for governor in November 2018.

For now, as of February 2016, Duncan is not in the public eye, though he has signed Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to represent him, as Deadline reports, “in all areas including books and speaking engagements.”

I wonder what Duncan would get CAA or any other agency to market as his USDOE success in a future bid for any political position of note, Illinois governor included.

And I wonder if he plans to write or speak on the glories of mayoral control, especially in Chicago.

Three words:

Litter box liner.

MOBocracy in Academia

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An incendiary atmosphere of hatred, divisiveness, intimidation and lies is filling today’s schools across America, with 73% of Jewish students admitting they’ve experienced some sort of anti-Semitism. Taking full advantage of America’s liberties, a captive audience and with the full knowledge of faculty, militant Islamic professors use the liberal campus environment to spew anti-American and anti-Israel agenda to effect changes and recruit new Jew-hating Muslims.

Pursuant to the activities of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) (an aggressively anti-Israel organization) and Conn Students in Solidarity with Palestine (CSSP), along with some teaching staff, Connecticut College is no longer the school described in its professed ideology. Founded in 1911, the school was to be a “vibrant social, cultural and intellectual community with an enriched diverse perspective”; to prepare “responsible citizens, creative problem-solvers, and thoughtful leaders in a global society.” It boasts of a “long-standing Honor Code,” with “students expected to monitor their own faithfulness to the principles of honesty and moral integrity.” It declares, “The principles of justice, impartiality and fairness – the foundations for equity – are paramount.”

Yet, in recent weeks an incident was allowed to escalate in direct contradiction to the College’s lofty aims, with the Honor Code’s becoming a Code of Silence. It involved Dr. Andrew Pessin, distinguished philosophy professor of Connecticut College, during the tenure of President Katherine Bergeron, who is responsible for internationalizing the curriculum, although not objectively; and David Canton, who paradoxically holds the title of Interim Dean of Institutional Equity and Inclusion. Pessin had posted a Facebook entry during the Fall 2015 semester, wherein he described the situation in Gaza as “a rabid pit bull trying to escape.”  His student, Lamiya Khandaker, an active member of SJP in high school, knew of the entry, and admitted she’d never felt victimized in his class. Yet in February, 2016, under the tutelage of her student advisor, Sufia Uddin, director of Global Islamic Studies, Lamiya decided to become offended and issued a complaint that the entry “condemned Palestinians.”

Pessin explained that he referred to Hamas, an acknowledged terrorist organization, apologized for any misunderstanding, and removed the Facebook entry, but the unrelenting student, obviously encouraged, intensified her attack, accusing him of racism and conspiring to annihilate the Palestinian people. This was her opportunity to create a crisis where none existed, to suppress speech in order to control the narrative, and specifically to target the Jewish professor who speaks favorably of Israel. Khandaker gathered her forces to malign his reputation. Concurrently, Ayla Zuraw-Friedland, editor of the Campus Voice, published articles by Michael Fratt and Katiyln Garbe, who wrote that Pessin condoned the extermination of a people, and other students’ anti-Semitic comments.  Ayla’s column also exposed her own lack of journalistic ethics and the anti-Semitic agenda of History Professor James T. Downs and others whose intent it was to create a hostile atmosphere for Dr. Pessin.

Dr. Pessin was denounced, he and his family threatened, and the hostility worsened, forcing him to leave the college. For her achievement, Lamiya Khandaker was granted the Scholar Activist award by the Dean (he of “Equity and Inclusion”) in May 2015.

Vitalized by success, CSSP students, under the direction of faculty advisor Eileen Kane, who heads the school’s Global Islamic Studies program, launched a poster campaign to vilify Israel, Jewish and Israeli students and faculty, including an attack on Israel’s Birthright program. The placards contained lies meant to mischaracterize and discredit Israel, Jewish historic and legal rights to their land; to intensify the fabricated accusation of Palestinian victimhood; and to motivate new students to the cause. A typical lie consists of their allegations of seven million Palestinian refugees today, while even the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), no friend to Israel, puts the number at five million and admits that no other group in the world but the Palestinians includes succeeding generations in their refugee status, thus establishing an entirely new definition of “refugee.” Adding insult to injury, the somewhat larger number of displaced Jews (refugees) during the same time period is never articulated.

In view of such developments, it is beyond ironic that in December 2005, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) endorsed a Ten-Year Programme of action for global governance and human rights and called for a UN resolution to protect Islam’s image and combat “Islamophobia.” They complained that racism and the defamation of religion lead to human rights violations – of Muslims’, specifically. They advocated the limitation of expression – in print, audio-visual and electronic media, and the Internet; and that xenophobia, intolerance and discrimination – even implied – were intolerable. An EU Monitoring Centre, renamed Fundamental Rights Agency, committed to freedom of expression, was, instead, committed to Islamophobia. Thus are people threatened and their rights limited, and students wage wars of words with threats of violence against other students and teaching staff. These young fascists shout down visiting speakers with whom they differ, forcing their departure.

Khandaker was thus encouraged and given authority to defy Israel’s validation and Pessin’s tenure. The College condoned Pessin’s sacrifice toward establishing Sharia Law, in which there are no freedoms of speech, thought, artistic expression or equality. Islam teaches that the Creator, Allah, granted people freedom of speech and yet, in contradiction, limited it by defining what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable speech. Evidently, Pessin dared contradict the Palestinian narrative and fell afoul of what Allah permits.

Students were further empowered to wage a war on campus because of visiting speakers invited by Eileen Kane. One was Remi Kanazi, who gives poetry performances on boycotting Israel. Another guest, although cancelled, was to be Rutgers University’s Jasbir K. Puar, a disturbed “queer” woman who, at Vassar, spewed proven-false and libelous accusations that Israelis harvest Palestinian organs and conduct scientific experiments. Pro-Israel speakers are never invited.

Connecticut College is yet another college that has relinquished its G-d-given and Constitution-guaranteed rights by complying with Islam’s Sharia. It is time to restore American rights to the American campus, with a strategy in place to counteract jihadi conduct. Why was there no official supervision to protect a valued teacher or to schedule a hearing by responsible peers? Why were Dr. Pessin’s fellow-instructors silent? President Bergeron was quick to condemn Pessin based on the allegations, but now owes the Professor an apology.

  • The students need to learn about being an American, and understand Dr. Pessin’s rights to speech and press, regardless of their own opinions. Khandaker must apologize to the professor and the school for creating the chaos, and return the ill-gotten award or be free to leave the school.
  • Student advisors must know their boundaries, and inciting to discriminate, cause harm or reward jihad and BDS do not fall within their job descriptions. A sincere apology is due Dr. Pessin for creating their detestable incident, waging a discriminatory campaign of falsehoods in an institute of learning, endangering Dr. Pessin and his family and causing his loss of income.  These advisors are deserving of losing their positions and income.
  • Dr. Canton was weak and unable to govern under the circumstances. Failing the task of ensuring that justice and peace prevail on campus, he must stand down – as others have done in similar circumstances (Missouri University). A leader is required to maintain civility on campus according to our Constitution, and in keeping with the implied promise that parents have the right to expect a safe environment and an honorable education for the tuition fees.
  • Intelligent classes on the true history of the Middle East and of Israel and Palestinians should be mandatory. History associate-professor and faculty advisor, James T. Downs, who uses his classroom for his anti-Semitic agenda, and Ayla Zuraw-Friedland, who admits to lacking journalistic ethics for the smear campaign, should be dismissed.
  • President Bergeron owes these and future students a balanced and unbiased international curriculum. Connecticut College owes its students the promise that we shall never cede our authority to Sharia law.

With appreciation to CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) and IPT (Investigative Project on Terrorism) for their research and reports on Connecticut College.