Tag Archive for: Harvard

HERO: Senator John Fetterman Whips off His Harvard Hood at Yeshiva University Commencement

Senator John Fetterman received a standing ovation after he removed his Harvard Crimson hood during Yeshiva University commencement in outrage over the rampant antisemitism at Harvard.

“25 years ago I graduated from Harvard University. Today, I have been profoundly disappointed with Harvard’s inability to stand up for the Jewish community. And for me personally, I do not fundamentally believe that it is right for me to wear this today.”

Sen. John Fetterman dramatically whips off Harvard hood at Yeshiva University commencement: ‘Profoundly disappointed’

By: Victor Nava, NY Post, May 29, 2024:

Sen. John Fetterman told Yeshiva University graduates Wednesday that he was “profoundly disappointed” in Harvard University’s inability to address antisemitism on campus before removing the ceremonial crimson academic hood representing his alma mater.

The Pennsylvania Democrat expressed his disapproval of the Ivy League school during his commencement address at the private Orthodox Jewish university, which bestowed on him its “Hero of Israel” award, the institution’s highest honor.

“I have been profoundly disappointed [in] Harvard’s inability to stand up for the Jewish community after Oct. 7,” Fetterman, 54, told the new grads at Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens.

“Personally, I do not fundamentally believe that it is right for me to wear this today,” the senator added as he removed the Harvard hood, identifying him as an alum, from around his neck.

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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.

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Air Force Academy Privately Fretted The End Of Race-Based Admissions Would Hamstring ‘Diversity’ Goals

The Air Force Academy’s top official worried the Supreme Court’s decision that race-based admissions were unconstitutional would set back the service’s “warfighting imperative” of building a racially diverse military, according to emails obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

On June 30, 2023, Lt. Gen. Richard Clark, the Air Force Academy’s superintendent, wrote a preview of the consequences that the Supreme Court’s decision striking down affirmative action could have for service academies’ abilities to judge candidates on the basis of race, according to emails the DCNF obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Although the justices did not overtly apply the decision to military schools, the records show how the Air Force Academy scrambled to minimize the impact of the June 29 decision on racial diversity goals.

“If we lose our limited window to reshape the racial diversity of each incoming class, it would affect our ability to meet the warfighting imperative of fielding a diverse, inclusive force,” Clark wrote.

The names of recipients of Clark’s email were redacted.

Clark noted that the Air Force Academy itself has limited discretion over the composition of each year’s incoming class. Congressional appointments, when U.S. senators and representatives nominate young members of their constituencies for attendance, determine more than half of entrants, with another 25% or so allotted to athletic recruitment.

After that, the academy is only able to “shape” the remaining 10% to 20% of officer candidates, Clark said. The academy could consider a variety of factors, including their potential to become pilots — for which the Air Force is experiencing a severe shortage — socio-economic status, gender and race.

“If [the U.S. Air Force Academy] were to voluntarily comply with the Supreme Court decision, our ability to shape a diverse class would become more limited,” Clark wrote.

Two candidates presenting similar overall qualifications might be judged based on those factors, he wrote, allowing for the possibility that a candidate’s race could be the determining factor. He noted that the Air Force Academy has outperformed other services in terms of racial and ethnic diversity.

“These factors are used to design a class of diverse backgrounds in accordance with [the Department of the Air Force’s] broad definition of diversity and operational needs,” Clark wrote. “As such, not being able to consider race in a holistic review would further hinder DAF diversity, moreso than civilian universities.”

The Air Force’s definition of diversity includes race, ethnicity, gender, personal life experience, cultural knowledge, prior education, work experience and “spiritual perspectives,” department guidance states.

Chief Justice John Roberts punted the question of whether the Supreme Court’s ruling on race-based admissions should apply to service academies to a later date, noting that the military may have “potentially distinct” reasons related to national security for considering race as a factor in admissions.

Following the court’s decision, Students for Fair Admissions sued the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the Naval Academy at Annapolis to prove their race-based admissions policies are discriminatory. In mid-December, a federal judge blocked an injunction that would have put a temporary stay on the Naval Academy’s use of race in admissions.

Department of Defense (DOD) service academy officials argued in July that the military does not entertain illegal racial quotas but does angle recruiting efforts at specific populations to meet racial, ethnic and gender diversity goals.

An email to Clark, dated Oct. 31, 2022, the day after oral arguments began, noted that the academy had worked extensively with the unnamed solicitor general, likely referring to U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar on the case to furnish her with the military’s perspective on the importance of considering race in admissions decisions. Representatives from the academy and members of other federal agencies attended two practice debates with the solicitor general, the records show.

The sender’s list was redacted, but language in the email suggests the sender was affiliated with the Air Force Academy.

“If what you’re asking me is whether we think the military has distinctive interests in this context, I would say yes,” Prelogar told the Supreme Court in October, a transcript shows. “And I think it’s critically important for the Court in its decision in these cases to make clear that those interests are, I think, truly compelling with respect to the military.”

The Air Force Academy would endeavor to remain in lockstep with its Army and Navy counterparts as well as guidance from the Secretary of Defense, Clark said in the June email.

Prior to a decision on the outcome of the case, however, the Air Force seemed confident the ruling would not meaningfully impact the Academy “since they do admission differently from Harvard/UNC,” an unnamed sender wrote in a June 29 email to Clark. That is, “as long as it didn’t ban targeting recruiting efforts.”

However, the sender noted that the Department of Defense and the academy would need some time to fully parse out the ramifications of whatever the Supreme Court decides.

The Air Force said it withheld some records from the DCNF’s request “as it is considered privileged in litigation” per United States Code, Title 5, Section 552 (b)(5) covering documents “which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency.”

The Air Force Academy did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

MICAELA BURROW

Investigative reporter, defense.

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‘Complicated’: Over 100 Harvard Faculty Defend ‘From The River To The Sea’

Over 100 Harvard faculty members signed a letter saying the phrase “from the river to the sea” is “complicated” in response to the president’s recent statement on antisemitism.

Harvard President Claudine Gay wrote multiple statements about the antisemitism on campus following backlash from donors and fire from former grads about her response to antisemitism on campus after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, including a new statement on Thursday denouncing the phrase “from the river to the sea,” which has genocidal implications. A letter signed by many Harvard faculty members claimed that “pressure from donors” is racist and that condemning the phrase “from the river to the sea” is the wrong decision.

“As Harvard faculty, we have been astonished by the pressure from donors, alumni, and even some on this campus to silence faculty, students, and staff critical of the actions of the State of Israel. It is important to acknowledge the patronizing tone and format of much of the criticism you have received as well as the outright racism contained in some of it,” the letter reads.

‘The signatories are the usual suspects from the anti Israel woke hard left. Their one sided screed is part of the problem, not part of any reasonable resolution. I doubt that many of them would sign a letter in support of the free speech of such ‘complex ‘ issues as racism, sexism, homophobia or Islamophobia. Their double standard against Israel is obvious,” former Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Student protests across the U.S. have used the phrase “from the river to the sea” as well as other anti-Israel slogans. Harvard University, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania implemented antisemitism task forces to address antisemitism on campus following the Hamas terrorist attacks.

Democratic Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib previously reposted a tweet with the phrase “From the river to the sea” and has made other anti-Israel comments. The House voted to censure Tlaib on Nov. 7 over anti-Israel comments made following the terrorist attacks.

“The phrase ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free’ has a long and complicated history. Its interpretation deserves, and is receiving, sustained and ongoing inquiry and debate,” the letter reads.

The letter goes on to call the choice to denounce the phrase “imprudent” and a misjudged “act of moral leadership.” “It might be framed in the language of liberation, but it calls for the destruction of Israel,” professor Norman Goda, Norman and Irma Braman Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Florida, told the DCNF.

Harvard did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

BRANDON POULTER

Contributor.

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All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

America’s Universities Reap What They Have Sown

America’s elite institutions are shuddering from the impact of the outbursts of anti-Semitism on their campuses. Their spasms of panic are animated less by the Israel-hatred and hostility to Jews emanating from their students than by something even atheist materialist postmoderns find terrifying: loss of income.

From Harvard to Berkeley, universities long-reputed to be the nation’s — and often the world’s — finest have proven to be cauldrons of seething bigotry. But it’s bigotry of a specific kind, aimed at Jews and the State of Israel.

This is not new; it’s been simmering for years. As journalist Seth Mandel reports, many universities’ “diversity, equity, and inclusion” agenda is substantially anti-Semitic. Numerous incidents of anti-Semitism have been well-documented, and the U.S. Department of Education currently is reviewing reports of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish behavior — even by some professors — at the City University of New York and its law school, UCLA, U.C. Berkeley, George Washington University, the University of Vermont, the State University of New York at New Paltz, and the University of Illinois.

Since Hamas launched its atrocity-laden attack on Israel on October 7, there have been outbursts of unrestrained Israel hatred at some of our country’s most storied places of higher education. Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania are among the schools at the center of the storm, but not just because so many of their students have signed odious petitions and blamed Israel for Hamas’s morally squalid assault.

These expressions of anti-Semitism have led many previously generous donors to pull their pledged donations. For example, former U.S. Ambassador to China John Huntsman has written to the president of the University of Pennsylvania that the institution is “deeply adrift in ways that make it almost unrecognizable.” Huntsman, a Penn alum and billionaire whose family has long supported the school, wrote that “the University’s silence in the face of reprehensible and historic Hamas evil against the people of Israel (when the only response should be outright condemnation) is a new low.”

Financier Kenneth Griffin, who “has donated more than half a billion dollars to Harvard University,” placed a call to the school’s president expressing dismay that Harvard had been so tepid in response to a public letter produced by 30 student groups blaming Israel for Hamas’s attacks. “Asked if his hedge fund Citadel would hire the head of a student group that signed the Harvard letter, his answer was an unequivocal no. ‘Unforgivable,’ he said.” Griffin then asked, “How do you end up in such a twisted place?”

So, with money on the line, university leaders are now almost falling over themselves condemning Hamas and its brutality. Better late than never. But there’s a larger issue at stake.

For decades, America’s top colleges and universities have become home to far-left academics who denigrate America’s founding, its history, and its basic principles. The United States is cast as a global villain and portrayed as little more than politically bankrupt and racially and economically oppressive. This is not about an honest accounting of the nation’s failures but an almost exclusive emphasis on her faults, omitting all that is noble in our past and worth upholding in the present.

So with Israel: According to some of America’s most talented young people, a little country founded after a mid-century genocide of six million Jews, occupying about 8% of the land mass of the Middle East, surrounded by Islamists for whom nothing short of Israel’s utter destruction will be enough, is at fault for the attacks and attempted conquest to which it so often has been subject. This mentality is, in part, the fruit of the propaganda to which they have been subject in the name of education. And fearful of offending those who scream the loudest, university leaders have cowered upon hearing such “woke” shibboleths as (so-called) justice, “triggering,” and so forth.

Even more, the unwillingness of college heads to articulate clear moral rights and wrongs stems from their own denial of objective, knowable, and unchanging truth, truth revealed by the Creator, Who our Declaration of Independence heralds as the author of our inherent rights. So, why is it unsurprising that impressionable students, many if not most raised in religiously vacuous homes and taught in faith-hostile schools, would gravitate to the grimy alleyways of anti-Semitism? That, Mr. Griffin, is why we are now in “such a twisted place.”

Donors to prestigious institutions are shocked by what they are seeing. Where have they been? And what do they expect? As C.S. Lewis wrote prophetically in “The Abolition of Man,” “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

AUTHOR

Rob Schwarzwalder

Rob Schwarzwalder is Senior Lecturer in Regent University’s Honors College.

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Supreme Court Strikes Down Affirmative Action Admissions

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday to block affirmative action in two closely watched lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC).

The cases, initially brought by a coalition of students, prospective applicants and their parents in 2014, challenged the universities’ use of racial preferences during the admissions process.

“Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision in the UNC case and a 6-2 decision in the Harvard case, which Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

“A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination,” Roberts wrote. “In otherwords, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.”

“Many universities have for too long done just the opposite,” he continued. “And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

The court overruled its 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, which held that race could be a factor in the admissions process.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented.

“Gulf-sized race-based gaps exist with respect to the health, wealth, and well-being of American citizens,” Jackson wrote. “They were created in the distant past, but have indisputably been passed down to the present day through the generations.”

Both lawsuits were brought by Students for Fair Admissions Inc. (SFFA), a coalition of over 20,000 prospective higher education students and parents, including one Asian American member who applied for Harvard and six other top schools but was denied admission in 2014, despite his academic record.

SFFA argued that Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by penalizing Asian American applicants, engaging in racial balancing, overemphasiz­ing race and rejecting race-neutral alter­natives. Similarly, SFFA argued UNC violated Title VI by rejecting alternative race-neutral criteria that could also ensure diversity in the admissions process.

The Supreme Court heard both cases in October. Schools have been anticipating the decision for months, searching for ways to maintain racial quotas without explicitly using racial preferences, such as eliminating standardized testing requirements and recruiting based on geographic region.

AUTHOR

KATELYNN RICHARDSON

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Here’s How Universities Plan To Skirt The Supreme Court’s Likely Ban On Race-Based Admissions

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All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Go Woke, Go Broke Lesson Three: Do Not Hire Out-Of-Touch Ivy Leaguers To Run Bud Light

Corporate America has not completely lost its marbles, but the bag sprang a leak about 10 years ago.

The Bud Light debacle could be another teachable moment for “woke” corporate America — if they listen. Know your customer. And if you do not know your customer, hire someone who does.

The public embarrassment of Bud Light missing the mark on an advertising campaign has cost the company billions in sales and market capitalization. Guess whose brainchild it was to plaster a flamboyant transvestite’s picture on its blue-collar beer brand? An out-of-touch, virtue signaling leftie, Mrs. Alissa Heinerscheid. And … wait for it … wait for it … a Harvard, Groton and Wharton grad. Her personal pronouns are “dumb” and “ass.”

In a video, Mrs. Heinerscheid proclaimed herself a hero by saying that if she did not do anything, there was no future for Bud Light. Really?  Bud Light, an iconic Budweiser brand, had no future? As she put it, except for her bravery Bud Light would no longer sell.

So she tried to change this great brand from Bud Light to Bud Light-in-the-Loafers.

In a leftist word salad worthy of a Kamala Harris speech, her stated goal with Bud was “inclusivity and shifting the tone.” No, your job is to sell beer, usually to middle-aged white men who have very real and very hard jobs that provide goods and services to people like you.

Thank goodness Mrs. Heinerscheid is white so Anheuser Busch could fire her. This speaks volumes about the curious, coastal liberal, elite class isolation and echo chamber thinking prevalent in people in her position in corporate America. This is the same thinking that prevails in both the Centers for Disease Control and the ruling political class in Washington, D.C.

The leaders of this generation, especially at the Ivy League, say they want to change the world, but they don’t even know how to change a tire.

Like actors, teachers and politicians, what corporations have come to realize is that the media and the policing authorities of the Democrat Party will leave you alone and let you do just about anything if you repeat their dictates. So, they went with a guy who really knows how to dictate, transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney.

You could argue that Bud Light has always been trans: it is water that identifies itself as a good beer. As a bourbon drinker, I think Bud Light is so weak that I call it the “official beer of child custody hearings.”

The tone-deaf nature of this beer campaign is repeated daily in corporate America by a class of young, left wing-indoctrinated, Ivy League dolts who could not run a hardware store. I worked on Wall Street with these type folks. They are no smarter than any state college graduate. And they are much more dangerous because the arrogance of their Ivy League indoctrination imbues  them with the false belief that they are much smarter than they really are. Doing well on the education industry-contrived SAT has become the marker for hiring rather than common sense and an up-through-the-ranks work ethic.

Hubris can remain at Harvard, but please do not try any of your “theories” about what is best for us on us. Keep those contained in your doctoral thesis for peer-reviewed papers.

The Ivy League, and thus corporate America, are in cultural decay.  They are managed by scared and “woke” people who are incentivized not by results but by tokenism, in a bureaucratic morass in which incompetence can hide.

I tell this joke when I speak at colleges. Three men are scheduled for electric chair execution on Death Row. One graduated from the University of Tennessee, the second from Alabama and the third from Harvard. The Warden and preacher are there, and all three death row prisoners are watching. The UT guy gets in the chair.  They try to execute him; sparks fly and the electric chair fails. The Warden and preacher say, “It is God’s will, he must be innocent,” and they free the man. Then the ‘Bama grad is seated, and the same thing happens. Preacher and Warden say, “It’s God’s will” and free the man. Having witnessed all this, the Harvard guy is last. The same thing happens: sparks fly and the officials say he is free to go. The Harvard grad says, “Wait a minute, if you just take that wire there and reconnect it to …”

EQ trumps IQ – every time.

AUTHOR

RON HART

A libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author, Ron is a commentator on radio and TV. He can be contacted at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

How American Colleges Have Failed Their Students

‘Western civ’ has become a term of reproach at many famous universities.


The dust jacket of John Agresto’s new book, The Death of Learning: How American Education Has Failed Our Students and What to Do about It, depicts Gore Hall at Harvard in the 1870s. Perhaps this is a subtle indication of what lies within: Gore Hall, Harvard’s first proper library, was demolished in 1913. To be sure, it was replaced by the grand Widener Library, which is a treasure. But will it remain a treasure?

In September 2020, the university announced in a press release that “Harvard Library has begun building an Anti-Racism team,” appointing its “first Anti-Black Racism Librarian/Archivist,” who “will work with colleagues across Harvard Library on objectives relating to centering anti-racism and diversity in our collections lifecycle.” Imagine being paid to string words together like this about a “collections lifecycle”—at Harvard.

But you don’t have to imagine: this is what has become of education in this country, not only at Harvard but pretty much everywhere. The situation, summed up in a sentence by Agresto: “There’s no way to view this as other than a tragedy.” Particularly insidious is that, unlike most examples of political attacks on education in the past, the recent “dismantling of the liberal arts comes from . . . within”:

It comes from radicalized departments of history, literature, classics, American studies, and all the myriad of other studies connected to ethnopolitical interest groups. It comes from virtually every school and college of education. This is why I have no hesitation in saying that liberal education in America is dying not by murder but by suicide.

Describing the self-destruction with grace, care, and regular doses of humor, Agresto does his best to imagine a better future. A superb writer who largely avoids inflammatory rhetoric, he is the rare gifted administrator who appears to have lost none of his humanity or sense of wonder when he entered the upper echelons of academic bureaucracy: as acting chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities in the mid-1980s, then as president of St. John’s College in Santa Fe from 1989 to 2000, and more recently as a founding trustee of the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani.

What are the liberal arts? This is Agresto’s pithy explanation, which he provides in highlighting italics: “a way of understanding the most important questions of human concern through reason and reflection.” He writes that “the liberal arts hold out the promise of freeing each of us from the captivity of prejudice, of platitudes and superstition, or of whatever it is that ‘everyone’ believes” and “aim at once to be truly radical and truly conservative,” demanding that individuals acquire a foundation in the wisdom of the past so that they can truly think for themselves.

Endangered education

Unfortunately, he laments, “a rich and thoroughgoing liberal arts education [now] seems to me as endangered as the Sumatran orangutan.” As he goes on to note, when he first began to think about the book, nearly three decades ago, he drafted such sentences as “It’s clear that in the realm of education the words ‘liberal arts’ have always been words of high praise” and commented on how very rare it was to find a “faculty of liberal arts that does not think of itself as the crown jewel of the whole educational enterprise.” How things change.

Yet even in the 1980s, the bonfire of the humanities was well underway. Agresto knows this, of course. Indeed, he spends a good number of pages on the dismantling of Stanford’s Western Culture curriculum, which was last taught in 1987–88. Some five hundred protesters, including Jesse Jackson, initiated this fight by marching on campus chanting, “Hey ho, ho ho, Western Civ has got to go!” The march took place in January 1987; in February, Agresto’s teacher Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind; and at the end of March 1988, the game was finally up when the Faculty Senate voted 39 to 4 to revamp the course to make it more global and, supposedly, less racist and sexist.

The fact is that the humanities—historically a subsection of the liberal arts: literature, music, history, etc.—have been in deep trouble for a long time. It is difficult to find a basic course on Shakespeare at most of the better-known colleges and universities; the rise of STEM, for all its wonders, has led in recent months to the Pandora’s box known as ChatGPT; and, worst of all, today’s would-be defenders of the humanities often don’t seem to have any idea what they’re defending or how to do it.

Part of the challenge is that defending the liberal arts involves clusters of questions and debates rather than a clearly articulated set of principles. Life’s biggest questions are almost never resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, and if we don’t study the differences between the Epicureans and the Stoics, between Locke and Rousseau, and between legal originalists and non-originalists, we are missing out on our own music: sometimes a battle of the bands, sometimes cacophony, always fascinating.

The diverse nature of the liberal arts means that to be educated means knowing not only the proverbial “best that has been thought and said in the world” but also the also-rans. “[W]e understand better the Founders’ Constitution,” Agresto writes, “by reading the writings of various Anti-Federalists alongside The Federalist Papers.” And beyond this: a liberal education should also “com[e] to grips with the very worst that has been said and done and understanding why.”

Disdain for the ordinary lives

Agresto firmly rejects the idea that people who study the humanities are more humane, perhaps even more human, than those who do not. Obviously he is correct about this. “Are we humanists and liberal artists actually more moral than . . . owners of delicatessens?” Agresto asks. I am the grandson of owners of a delicatessen who did not attend college, and I have no hesitation in saying that they were more moral than both I and most people I have known in decades in academia.

It is one thing to extol the extraordinary, as we should all do. But it is deeply wrong to disdain or condemn the ordinary. Yet this is how the American elite is now acting. “[O]rdinary family life, heterosexuality, simple love of country, traditional virtues, traditional religious habits and outlooks”—all are under regular attack at institutions of higher learning, which at the same time present students with such gotcha questions as “Have you ever been to a gay or lesbian bar, social club, or march? If not, why not?” (courtesy of North Dakota State). It is good to remember Cardinal Newman, as Agresto of course does: “a University training is the great ordinary means to a great but ordinary end.”

For Social Justice Warriors, however, there is a horrifying new “ordinary.” Here’s how Agresto puts it, after reminding us that Social Justice was the name of Father Coughlin’s virulently anti-Semitic journal:

The last thirty years have seen the vandalizing of ever so much of higher education. The supposed reformers have entered the storehouse of centuries of accumulated knowledge, torn down its walls, thrown out its books, and toppled its monuments. For all their brave talk of justice, they have carried out what has to be seen as one of the most intellectually criminal acts of the ages, the modern equivalent of burning the libraries of antiquity. Today, acts that were unthinkable, unimaginable, just years ago now seem so very ordinary.

Agresto’s book is liberal, largely moderate, and explicitly American: liberal not as opposed to “conservative,” but in the sense of being about freedom (Latin libertas, the source of our “liberty”); moderate because moderation is “the virtue a liberal education cultivates best, as well as the virtue for which it is often criticized most”; and American for the reason that “[b]ecause we are diverse, for each of us ‘our own’ means not only what we hold in common but also what we hold separately.” This defense of liberal education will especially resonate with readers like me who at least used to consider themselves liberal, who try when possible to occupy the middle ground, and who find themselves increasingly aggressive about promoting American ideals and institutions.

Underestimating outrage

Though it is at times repetitive, you can pick up The Death of Learning and read almost any chapter on its own and be edified. But the greatest flaw, in my view, is that Agresto does a better job of explaining “how American education has failed our students” than “what to do about it.” Not that he doesn’t say the right things: about the desirability of investing large sums in small liberal arts colleges; the importance of winning over the young and those who teach them (for which reason he ends the book with two heartfelt exhortations: “A Message to High School Teachers and Principals” and “A Message to High School Seniors”); and the possibilities that new universities offer—from Austin, Texas (disclosure: I am on the advisory board of the University of Austin) to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. But, as I have already hinted, I found in the second half of the book more wishful thinking than original policy suggestions.

There are also a few spots where Agresto gets things wrong. Sometimes he should know better. Most egregious is his valorization of Anthony Fauci, who majored in classics at Holy Cross. Agresto links him with Martin Luther King Jr. as “discerning men of public presence, insight, persuasiveness, and judgment—and thus capable of doing great things,” but I for one would not use him as an exemplar of why a “liberal arts education [is] something peculiarly important and estimable” (italics in original).

On other occasions, however, Agresto overestimates goodwill and overlooks the extent of academic outrage about certain topics. He may be at his strongest when he explains how a liberal education can be not merely of value to us as individuals but of genuine use—Agresto does not shy away from this word—to our collective well-being as a country. He highlights the education and sense of civic responsibility of three of America’s Founding Fathers and its nineteenth-century “refounder,” but fails to note that in the past three years, prominent statues of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln have been taken down or that James Madison’s estate, Montpelier, has become aggressively woke.

Fair enough, perhaps. But would he have predicted that a statue of John Witherspoon that an elite university erected as recently as 2001 would now be under serious threat? As I write, the Princeton administration is debating what to do about a prominently placed representation of the only clergyman and only college president to sign the Declaration of Independence: a citizen of the world after whom the organization that publishes Public Discourse is named. (Disclosure: Princeton fired me last year, but I remain a Senior Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute.) The controversy has made national news, including in these pages. To those who would take down the statue, I offer Witherspoon’s admonition to Princetonians of long ago: “Do not live useless and die contemptible.”

Let me end on a positive note. In his salutary reflections on an “alliance” between the liberal arts and vocational education, Agresto quotes Booker T. Washington, who was assuredly neither useless nor contemptible. Of a student who made use of grammar, chemistry, and other bookish subjects in the raising of an acre of splendid cabbages, Washington wrote, “[T]here is just as much that is interesting, strange, mysterious, and wonderful; just as much to be learned that is edifying, broadening, and refining in a cabbage as there is in a page of Latin.” He was right, and I’ll add to the discussion Pliny the Elder’s statement in the first century AD, Brassicae laudes longum est exsequi (“it would be a lengthy business to enumerate the glories of the cabbage”).

Learning in all its forms can and must be saved. We do not live in the best of all possible worlds, and it is time for everyone to stop the destructive nonsense and return to cultivating our precious gardens, both agricultural and academic.

This article has been republished from Public Discourse with permission.

AUTHOR

Joshua Katz

Joshua T. Katz is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on higher education, language and culture, the classical tradition, and the humanities broadly defined. A linguist… More by Joshua Katz

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

San Francisco Sees More Overdose Deaths Than Covid Deaths in 2020

Data show alarming trends in drug overdoses and suicide as people—especially young people who are least at risk from COVID-19—are forcibly cut off from friends, families, and communities.


It’s quite likely that wherever you are reading this, you are currently subjected to lockdowns, restrictions, regulations, or executive orders to one degree or another, as government officials respond to the coronavirus pandemic with increasing coercion and control. Indeed, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that US states and cities have “imposed the most extensive restrictions on business and social gatherings” since the spring.

Many argue that these new restrictions are essential for slowing the current surge in coronavirus cases in certain areas, but some public health researchers have pointed out that lockdowns and related government orders that focus entirely on containing COVID-19 cases lead to worse public health outcomes in other areas. This collateral damage from lockdowns is already glaringly apparent. In particular, data show an alarming trend toward drug overdoses and suicide in 2020, as people—especially young people who are least at risk from COVID-19—are forcibly cut off from their friends, families, and communities.

The desperation is revealed in startling new statistics. According to the Associated Press, a total of 621 people have died of drug overdoses this year in San Francisco, compared to 173 deaths in the city from COVID-19. The number of San Francisco drug overdose deaths is up from 441 in 2019. California has enacted some of the strictest public health orders in the country this year, and is still seeing its cases rise.

One survey by YouGov found that 39 percent of respondents who were recovering from an addiction prior to lockdowns have relapsed. Other research shows increasing rates of drug and alcohol abuse in 2020, and the CDC reports that overdose deaths are accelerating during COVID-19.

Federal surveys show that 40 percent of Americans are now grappling with at least one mental health or drug-related problem.

Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician and epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, has been critical of widespread lockdowns since the beginning of the pandemic, warning that these coercive strategies would lead to other serious public health harms and increased mortality.

“The current lockdown strategy has led to many excess deaths, both from COVID-19 and from the collateral damage on other health outcomes,” Kulldorff recently told Newsweek. “A focused protection strategy, as outlined in the Great Barrington Declaration, would minimize disease and mortality by better protecting older and other high risk people while letting the young live near normal lives.”

Kulldorff also suggests that new data showing US excess deaths in 2020 for people ages 25-44 are mostly due to the collateral damage caused by lockdown policies.

In addition to rising drug and alcohol abuse and overdose deaths, suicidal thoughts and attempts are also increasing this year. The Washington Post reports that depression and anxiety have surged since the arrival of the coronavirus.

“Federal surveys show that 40 percent of Americans are now grappling with at least one mental health or drug-related problem. But young adults have been hit harder than any other age group, with 75 percent struggling,” the Post reports. “Even more alarming, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently asked young adults if they had thought about killing themselves in the past 30 days, 1 in 4 said they had.”

The Post explains that we won’t have accurate data on suicide rates for 2020 until another couple of years, due to slow reporting mechanisms. But state and city data for some areas suggest disturbing suicide numbers this year, including in Oregon’s Columbia County where suicides by summertime had already exceeded the area’s 2019 total, and DuPage County near Chicago reports a 23 percent increase in suicides over last year. Other large counties in the US have seen similarly ominous trends, and in Japan, more people died of suicide in the month of October alone than have died from COVID-19 this entire year.

As families weigh the trade-offs this holiday season between social isolation to slow the spread of coronavirus and the harms that this separation can cause, many of them are choosing to ignore public health warnings to avoid travel and holiday gatherings. The New York Times reports that millions of people have passed through airport security checkpoints this week, while The Wall Street Journal indicates that nearly 85 million Americans are expected to travel between Dec. 23 and Jan. 3, a decline of just under 30 percent from last year.

More families may be seeing the damage these lockdowns and related policies are causing their loved ones and are no longer willing to comply with draconian orders to stay away from others. Their decision may be made easier when they see public health officials and politicians personally violating the holiday travel and gathering warnings and rules they thrust on others.

COVID-19 should be taken seriously as a public health threat, but so too should the harms of lockdowns and government orders that are leading to record numbers of drug overdose deaths and suicides, along with other types of collateral damage such as rising global poverty and declining cancer screenings.

While public health and elected officials remain singularly focused on COVID-19, families gathering this holiday season recognize that ensuring the overall health and well-being of their loved ones extends beyond one virus.

COLUMN BY

Kerry McDonald

Kerry McDonald is a Senior Education Fellow at FEE and author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom (Chicago Review Press, 2019). She is also an adjunct scholar at The Cato Institute and a regular Forbes contributor. Kerry has a B.A. in economics from Bowdoin College and an M.Ed. in education policy from Harvard University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. You can sign up for her weekly newsletter on parenting and education here.

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

Harvard Hires PLO Executive to Mentor Students

Clarion discovers over $2.6 million in donations from the Palestinians to Harvard


Harvard University named Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat — who serves as secretary general of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) — as a fellow at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Erekat, a man who called random stabbing attacks on Israeli citizens by Palestinian terrorists “self-defense,” will be charged with mentoring students and giving seminars in the school’s “The Future of Diplomacy Project.”

PLO member Erekat is one of four new fellows appointed by the school to the project. Commenting on the appointments, faculty chair Nicholas Burns said that the new fellows “will strengthen our capacity to learn the lessons of effective diplomacy and statecraft.”

In the course of research to our new documentary film Covert Cash (see below), Clarion Project discovered that the Palestinian Authority (PA), which essentially serves as the governmental arm of the PLO, made six donations to Harvard between the years of 2017 and 2019. The donations totaled $2,625,000.

The film asks, among other questions, what type of return on their investments are these foreign governments getting from their donations to American universities?

Since its inception, the PA has pleaded poverty and solicited donations from the world community. As of December 2018, the U.S. government had given the Palestinian Authority $5 billion in taxpayer dollars since 1994 (post the Oslo Accords). The European Union is one of their largest funders of the PA as well. Besides being used to line the pockets of top PA executives, Israel maintains that a good portion of this donated money has been used for terror.

The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded in 1964 with the purpose of “liberating Palestine” through armed struggle. Most of the enormous amount of violence perpetrated by the group over the years has been aimed at Israeli civilians.

The PLO was considered by the United States to be a terrorist organization until the Madrid Conference in 1991.

In 1993, the PLO ostensibly recognized the right of Israel to exist, yet continued to perpetrate terror attacks against Israel. It coordinated those attacks during the 2000–2005 Second Intifada and afterwards with the Palestinian Authority, its governmental arm.

Erekat has been involved in every Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiation since 2000 – all failed endeavors (most likely due to the fact that he explicitly stated in a 2014 interview with Al Jazeera, “I will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state”).

Nevertheless, Erekat will now bring his “expertise” – both as a diplomatic and as the author of 14 books on foreign policy, oil, conflict resolution and negotiations – to Harvard, where students at one of the most prestigious foreign policy schools in the country will be educated by him.

More facts about Erekat:

  • In 2015, Erekat compared Israel to ISIS saying, “There is no difference between the terrorism practiced by the group led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Israel’s terrorism”
  • He called Israel’s expansion of settlements “terrorism” at a time when settlements had seen nearly zero physical expansion for 25 years. In negotiations with then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Erekat admitted that the settlements took up only 1.1 percent of the areas Palestinians wanted for a state
  • Erekat denies archaeological evidence of the Jewish history in Jerusalem
  • Erekat claimed his family had lived in Israel for 9,000 years, yet evidence shows that the family comes from the Huwait region of Arabia

EDITORS NOTE: This Clarion Project column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Harvard Graduate Claira Janover Posts TikTok Video Threatening to Stab Anyone who says ‘All Lives Matter’

https://twitter.com/Bubblebathgirl/status/1278000057145491456

Worldwide News reported:

A Harvard graduate who posted a viral video jokingly saying she will stab anyone who says ”All Lives Matter” said she has now been fired from her job. Claira Janover, who worked at Deloitte after graduating with a degree in Government and Psychology from the Ivy League college earlier this year, previously said she had been getting death threats over her TikTok video calling out those who have ”the nerve, the sheer entitled caucasity” to say All Lives Matter.”Imma stab you, ”

Janover said. ”Imma stab you and while you’re struggling and bleeding out, Imma show you my paper cut and say, ‘My cut matters too. ”’

[ … ]

Janover later removed the ”All Lives Matter” video from her TikTok account, but versions of it are still being shared elsewhere on social media.

A TikTok video that recently went viral on social media showed a recent Harvard graduate threatening to stab anyone who said “all lives matter.” In her melodrama, she tried to sound intimidating with her histrionics.

She won a huge audience as she intended. But her video also came to the attention of the company that was going to give her an internship later this summer, Deloitte, which decided it didn’t want to add an intern who threatened to kill strangers who said something she didn’t like.

This wouldn’t have been much of a story. But then the narcissistic Harvard alum posted a very different video—one that showed her weeping in a near-fetal position.

She fought back tears while complaining how unfair the world had been to her. Her initial TikTok post had earned cruel pushback from the social media jungle she had courted. Deloitte, she sobbed, was mean and hurtful. And she wanted the world to share her pain.

The Harvard grad instantly became an unwitting poster girl for the current protest movement and the violence that has accompanied it. What turns off millions of Americans about the statue topplingthe looting, the threats, and the screaming in the faces of police is the schizophrenic behavior of so many of the would-be revolutionaries.

Actions have consequences. Threats do not solve problems, they exacerbate them.

“Stupid is as stupid does.” – Forrest Gump

©All rights reserved.

Notre Dame Professor Gabriel Said Reynolds falsely claims that Qur’an teaches only Allah should take revenge

The fact that Gabriel Said Reynolds, who demonstrates here that he is either abjectly ignorant or willfully dishonest about Islam, is a professor of theology at Notre Dame shows how much our nation’s universities (and the Catholic Church) are dominated by fantasy and wishful thinking rather than being willing to deal with unpleasant realities. Reynolds is an academic laden with honors, employed at Notre Dame and published in the New York Daily News, not because he speaks the truth, with which he is either unacquainted or unwilling to disclose, but because he tells people what they want to hear: that Islam, if only it were properly understood, is actually a religion of peace. How it came to be that so many Muslims misunderstand the religion they follow so devoutly, he does not bother to explain.

Meanwhile, would the New York Daily News ever publish a comparably lengthy theological defense of Christianity? Not on your life.

Anyway, to make his case that in Islam, vengeance belongs to Allah alone, Reynolds quotes a number of Qur’an verses, but he doesn’t even mention or attempt to explain away others that disprove his case. There is actually a great support, passed over in silence by Reynolds here, in the Qur’an and Sunnah for the death penalty for blasphemy. It can arguably be found in this verse: “Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment.” (5:33)

But if you don’t think that verse justifies killing those who insult Islam, there is this: “Those who annoy Allah and His Messenger – Allah has cursed them in this World and in the Hereafter, and has prepared for them a humiliating Punishment” (33:57)

Yes, he has cursed them both in this world and the hereafter. What does a curse in this world look like? Muslims are told to fight such people: “If they violate their oaths after pledging to keep their covenants, and attack your religion, you may fight the leaders of paganism – you are no longer bound by your covenant with them – that they may refrain” (9:12).

Not only that, but the Qur’an explicitly says that Allah will punish people by the hands of the believers: “Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands and will disgrace them and give you victory over them and satisfy the breasts of a believing people, and remove the fury in the believers’ hearts.” (9:14-15)

There is more in the hadith. In one, Muhammad asked: “Who is willing to kill Ka’b bin Al-Ashraf who has hurt Allah and His Apostle?” One of the Muslims, Muhammad bin Maslama, answered, “O Allah’s Apostle! Would you like that I kill him?” When Muhammad said that he would, Muhammad bin Maslama said, “Then allow me to say a (false) thing (i.e. to deceive Kab).” Muhammad responded: “You may say it.” Muhammad bin Maslama duly lied to Ka’b, luring him into his trap, and murdered him. (Bukhari 5.59.369)

“A Jewess used to abuse the Prophet and disparage him. A man strangled her till she died. The Apostle of Allah declared that no recompense was payable for her blood.” (Sunan Abu-Dawud 38.4349)

Why doesn’t Gabriel Said Reynolds mention any of those passages?

“What radical Muslims get wrong about the Koran: Vengeance is reserved for God alone,” by Gabriel Said Reynolds, New York Daily News, March 1, 2020:

In the name of Allah, militant Muslims continue taking up arms against people they consider threats to their faith and way of life. But does it make theological sense for humans to pick up swords and guns to exact retribution in this life?

The Koran, the book those same Muslims purport to revere, says no….

The irony of blasphemy laws, and the tragedy of these attacks carried out in supposed defense of Islam, is that the Koran time and again insists that it is God’s right, and God’s right alone, to exact vengeance.

Allah does not need Muslims to step in and punish those who insult Him. In fact, Allah does not want Muslims to do so. The God of the Koran is clear: He is the only avenger of Islam.

The case of blasphemy laws in Islam is particularly peculiar in light of the example of Muhammad himself. The Koran describes how the unbelievers in his native city of Mecca disputed his claims of prophethood and insulted him.

Koran 68:51 describes how they accused him of insanity: “Indeed, the faithless almost devour you with their eyes when they hear this Reminder, and they say, ‘He is indeed crazy.’”

The Koran does not respond by demanding that the blasphemers be killed for their insolence. It simply affirms the claims of Muhammad.

Elsewhere in the Koran, the voice of God counsels Muhammad to be patient when faced with opposition. Koran 16:126 alludes to some persecution or affliction which Muhammad has suffered from the unbelievers.

The next verse, in response, suggests that Muhammad could strike back in moderation, but should simply endure the persecution patiently: “If you retaliate, retaliate with the like of what you have been made to suffer, but if you are patient, that is surely better for the steadfast.”

This does not mean that the idea of vengeance is foreign to the Koran. The question the Koran poses is not whether offenses against Islam and Muslims should be avenged, but who should do the avenging.

And the answer is consistent: “God.”

Remarkably, and if only Boko Haram and other Salafi-Jihadis would listen, the Koran even teaches this lesson specifically about Christians. In Sura 5, God asks some questions of Jesus about those who followed him, but Jesus does not demand that the wrongdoers be punished.

He leaves their fate in God’s hands: “If Thou chastisest them, they are Thy servants; if Thou forgivest them, Thou art the All-mighty, the All-wise.”

The same lesson is taught about Muslims who are unfaithful to the laws of Islam. In chapter 5, verse 95, the Koran describes the laws of the pilgrimage to Mecca (known as the Hajj). But as for he who breaks the rules, the Koran gives no worldly punishment: “God will take vengeance on him, God is all-mighty, Vengeful.”

So what does divine vengeance look like in the Koran? Allah punishes those who offend Him in hell. The Koran not only describes paradise in vivid colors (as a place with food, drink, and women), it also describes hell in gruesome detail.

Angels of punishment will strike the damned from the front and the back. The damned will be condemned to drink boiling water and eat from a tree named Zaqqum whose fruit is like the heads of demons.

The Koran clearly considers this punishment enough for an unbeliever. Whereas the standard schools of Islam teach that someone who leaves the religion, an apostate, is to be killed, the only punishment for apostasy spoken of in the Koran is hell: “’Did you disbelieve after you had believed? Then taste the chastisement for that you disbelieved!’” (Quran 3:106).

The Koran also teaches that God need not wait for the afterlife to punish unbelievers. He is the lord of the universe and can intervene when He chooses.

A number of chapters in the Koran tell a series of tales, dubbed “punishment stories” by scholars, in which unbelieving peoples are punished for rejecting the prophet who is sent to them. Among these prophets are Biblical figures including Noah, Lot, and Moses, and others who seem to come from Arabian lore with names like Hud, Salih, and Shuʿayb.

In each story it is not the Prophet but God who intervenes….

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

Breaking News from Harvard: Faith is Good for You

The Bible tells us that there is nothing new under the sun (Ecc. 1:9). So often what passes for “news” is really nothing more than a refresher. A case in point is a new study from published this month in the American Journal of Epidemiology about the link between religious upbringing and subsequent health and well-being.

One not-so-surprising finding of the study, which was done by Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is that, “Compared with no attendance, at least weekly attendance of religious services was associated with greater life satisfaction and positive affect, a number of character strengths, lower probabilities of marijuana use and early sexual initiation, and fewer lifetime sexual partners.” Additionally, among the studies’ participants:

“Compared with never praying or meditating, at least daily practice was associated with greater positive affect, emotional processing, and emotional expression; greater volunteering, greater sense of mission, and more forgiveness; lower likelihoods of drug use, early sexual initiation, STIs, and abnormal Pap test results; and fewer lifetime sexual partners.”

These findings aren’t a surprise to us here at FRC. For years, we’ve seen this in practice, and in data like those published by our friend Pat Fagan at the Marriage and Religion Research Institute. It is a demonstrable fact that when faith is allowed to flourish, good outcomes are in store for society at large.

The study’s author observes,

“These findings are important for both our understanding of health and our understanding of parenting practices. Many children are raised religiously, and our study shows that this can powerfully affect their health behaviors, mental health, and overall happiness and well-being.”

Of course, we know that “faith” in a generic sense doesn’t always guarantee a comfortable outcome, but an abiding faith in Jesus Christ can anchor a person’s soul for whatever he or she may face in life. A study like this won’t necessarily cause people to embrace faith, but it does show that a society in which religious liberty thrives will be a healthier society. And any government that wants to promote the well-being of its people should give ample space for people to have the freedom to believe and to live out those beliefs.


Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.


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Harvard Poll: Trump, Carson Lead Republican Primary — Sanders Edging Clinton Among Democrats

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A new national poll of America’s 18- to 29- year-olds by Harvard’s Institute of Politics (IOP), at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, finds Donald Trump (22%) and Ben Carson (20%) locked in a dead-heat as young Republicans’ first choice in their party’s presidential primary – and young Democrats giving the edge to Bernie Sanders (41%) over Hillary Clinton(35%) as the top selection in their presidential primary.  Overall, a majority (56%) of 18- to 29- year-olds prefer a Democrat win the 2016 campaign for president over a Republican, a net increase of five points since the IOP’s spring 2015 survey was released.

The IOP’s newest poll results also show – in the wake of the mid-November Paris terrorist attacks – a solid majority (60%) support the U.S. committing ground troops to defeat ISIS.  When asked how likely they would be to serve, 16% said they “have already,” “would definitely” or “would strongly consider” joining the U.S. military to combat ISIS if additional troops were needed.  A detailed report on the poll’s findings is available online: http://www.iop.harvard.edu/harvard-iop-fall-2015-poll.

“For 15 years, the IOP has polled Millennials, the largest generation in U.S. history,” said Harvard Institute of Politics Director Maggie Williams.  “Our fall poll shows they are deeply divided about who should lead America, focused on candidate integrity and split over whether the American Dream is alive or not.  We are hopeful that political leaders will inspire and include this generation in conversations about the future of their country.”

The IOP’s 28th major release since 2000, the GFK-KnowledgePanel® survey of 2,011 18- to 29- year-old U.S. citizens has a margin of error of +/– 2.8 percentage points (95% confidence level) and was conducted online with the Government and Academic Research team of GfK for the IOP between October 30 and November 9, 2015.  The poll finds:

Solid Majority of America’s 18- to 29- Year-Olds Support Sending Ground Troops to Combat ISIS.  Early fall 2015 IOP polling fielded before the Nov. 13 Paris terrorist attacks showed America’s youth split over whether to send U.S. ground troops to combat ISIS, with 48% saying they supported the action (48%: oppose) – a nine percentage-point drop in support over the past eight months (Mar. 2015: 57% support, 40% oppose).  However, IOP polling re-fielded the question following the Nov. 13 Paris terrorist attacks – finding a 12 percentage-point swing in support with a strong majority (60%) of young Americans supporting sending U.S. ground troops to combat ISIS (40%: oppose).

Entering 2016, 18- to 29- Year-Olds Prefer Democrats Maintain Control of White House.  As shown in spring 2015 IOP polling, young Americans prefer that a Democrat win the White House over a Republican in the 2016 race for president.  November IOP polling indicated a majority (56%) prefer a Democrat, with less than four-in-ten preferring a Republican (36%).

Donald Trump and Ben Carson locked in Dead-Heat, Ahead of Republican Presidential Candidate Field.  Among potential Republican primary voters (definite, probable or 50-50; n=472), fall 2015 IOP polling showed Donald Trump (22%) and Ben Carson (20%) in a statistical dead-heat – with a strong lead over the rest of the Republican candidate field.  Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz captured seven (7%) percent, closely followed byRand Paul and Jeb Bush (each with 6%), Carly Fiorina (3%), Mike Huckabee (3%), Rick Santorum (3%), John Kasich (2%), Lindsey Graham (1%), Bobby Jindal (1%), Chris Christie (1%), and George Pataki (<1%) – with 17% undecided.  Regardless of whom potential Republican primary voters plan to support, forty-three percent (43%) say they believe Ben Carson is “qualified to be president” (17%: “not qualified;” 41%: don’t know).  Slightly more than one-third (38%) said the same about Donald Trump (39%: “not qualified;” 22%: don’t know).  Seventeen percent (17%) said they were “very satisfied” with the Republican candidates for president this year (47%: “somewhat satisfied;” 25%: “not very satisfied;” 11%: “not at all satisfied”).

Starting at 1% in Spring 2015, Bernie Sanders Now Holds Lead (41%-35%) over Hillary Clinton; Most Don’t Believe “Democratic Socialist” Label Makes a Difference.  While Hillary Clinton maintains double-digit leads over Bernie Sanders in national polls of likely Democratic primary voters, November IOP polling showed 18- to 29- year-old potential Democratic primary voters (definite, probable or 50-50; n=751) as an outlier – with Sanders holding a slight edge and leading Clinton 41%-35% (22%: don’t know).  Less than one percent (<1%) said they supported Martin O’Malley.  A strong majority (66%) of 18- to 29- year-old potential Democratic primary voters said the fact that Bernie Sanders is a self-described Democratic Socialist made “no difference” in their likelihood to support his candidacy.  Slightly less than one-quarter (24%) said the label made them “more likely” to support Sanders, with only nine percent (9%) saying it made them “less likely.”  In addition, nineteen percent (19%) said they were “very satisfied” with the Democratic candidates for president this year (53%: “somewhat satisfied;” 21%: “not very satisfied;” 6%: “not at all satisfied”).

Nearly Half of Young Americans Believe the American Dream is Dead for Them. When November IOP polling asked 18- to 29- year-olds if the “American Dream is alive or dead” for them personally, respondents were nearly evenly split (49%: “alive;” 48%: “dead”).  While no significant difference was found based on race or ethnicity (whites – 49% said “alive;” African-Americans – 44% said “alive;” Hispanics – 52% said “alive”), respondents’ level of education did play a role.  Nearly six-in-ten (58%) college graduates said the American Dream was alive for them personally, compared to only 42% of those not in college/never enrolled in college saying the same.  Additionally, a significant majority of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders supporters said they believed the American dream was “dead” (Trump voters – 61%: American Dream “dead,” 39%: “alive;” Sanders voters – 56%: American Dream “dead,” 44%: “alive”).

America’s 18- to 29- Year-Olds Say Integrity, Level-Headedness and Authenticity – Not Experience – Most Valued Attributes in Future President.  When the IOP’s fall poll asked 18-29 year olds what attributes they valued most in a presidential candidate, integrity (51%), level-headedness (33%) and authenticity (26%) topped the list – with political experience (18%) and business experience (11%) trailing behind.

70% of 18- to 29- Year-Old Republicans, 31% of Democrats Support Building a Wall on the Border of the U.S. and Mexico.  Forty-three percent (43%) of America’s youth said they supported building a wall on the border of the United States and Mexico, with a slim majority (53%) saying they oppose the idea.  Support differed among Republicans (70%: support; 28%: oppose), Democrats (31%: support; 68%: oppose) and Independents (42%: support; 56%: oppose).

Engagement Slipping Since 2011: 20% of America’s Youth Say They Are Politically Engaged; Less Than Half Say They Are Following 2016 Campaign.  Only two-in-ten (20%) of America’s young adults said they considered themselves “politically engaged and active,” a drop of five percentage points compared to IOP polling conducted during the same pre-election time period four years ago (fall 2011: 25%).  When fall 2015 IOP polling asked America’s young adults “how closely do you follow the 2016 presidential race?” – only 46% said they were following the campaign “very” or “somewhat” closely (52%: “not very” or “not at all”).

Methodology

The goal of the project was to collect 2,000 completed interviews with young Americans between 18- and 29- years old.  The main sample data collection took place from October 30 through November 9.  A small pretest was conducted prior to the main survey to examine the accuracy of the data and the length of the interview.

Four thousand four hundred and forty-one (4,441) KnowledgePanel members were assigned to the study.  The cooperation rate was 45.2 percent which resulted in 2,011 completed interviews included in this report (after data cleaning).  Eighty-three (83) interviews were conducted in Spanish with the remainder done in English.  The web-enabled KnowledgePanel® is a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the U.S. population.  Initially, participants are chosen scientifically by a random selection of telephone numbers and residential addresses. Persons in selected households are then invited by telephone or by mail to participate in the web-enabled KnowledgePanel®. For those who agree to participate, but do not already have Internet access, GfK provides a laptop and ISP connection at no cost. People who already have computers and Internet service are permitted to participate using their own equipment. Panelists then receive unique log-in information for accessing surveys online, and are sent e-mails throughout each month inviting them to participate in research. More technical information is available at http://www.knowledgenetworks.com/ganp/reviewer-info.html and by request to the IOP.

Harvard University’s Institute of Politics (IOP), located at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, was established in 1966 as a memorial to President Kennedy.  The IOP’s mission is to create the future of politics and public service every day, inspiring undergraduates to lead lives of purpose by committing themselves to the practice of politics, governing, public service and the countless opportunities to make a difference in the world. More information is available online at www.iop.harvard.edu.   

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