I remember how it was -- JR
Rep. Rudy Yakym Puts University DEI Departments on Notice for Anti-Semitism
In light of the October 7 terrorist attack Hamas perpetrated against Israel, colleges and universities around the country have alarmingly failed to rise to the occasion to call out anti-semitism taking place on their campuses. Rep. Rudy Yakym (R-IN), though, is looking to put them on notice, specifically when it comes to what, if anything, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) officers are doing about it, as Townhall has learned.
On Monday, Yakym sent a letter to 110 college and universities' DEI officials. Included among them are those where there have already been instances of anti-semitism on campus so far, such as Harvard, Cornell, Cooper Union, UPenn, UC Berkeley, George Washington University, George Mason, Georgetown, and Yale.
Jews have not merely been targeted by Hamas with "unspeakable war crimes," as the congressman's letter points out, but the ensuing "global convulsion of antisemitism," with the letter adding "sadly, America's university campuses have not been immune."
"Israeli and Jewish students and faculty across the country have expressed concern at the current climate on campuses. There are too many examples of threats or acts of physical violence, verbal harassment, intimidation, graffiti, stalking, and other menacing actions directed at Israeli and Jewish students and faculty. Some have even been forced to barricade themselves in rooms for safety," the letter goes on to add, mentioning one such example that took place at Cooper Union.
Yakym's letter also refers to what efforts there's been from President Joe Biden and his administration. In a recent statement provided to the Times of Israel, White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates noted "an extremely disturbing pattern of antisemitic messages being conveyed on college campuses…that call for the annihilation of the state of Israel; for genocide against the Jewish people." As Bates' statement aptly pointed out, "Delegitimizing the State of Israel while praising the Hamas terrorist murderers who burned innocent people alive, or targeting Jewish students, is the definition of unacceptable--and the definition of antisemitism."
In one of the 110 letters, in this case to Dr. Sherri Charleston at Harvard University, which Townhall obtained, Yakym's letter raises concerns that these DEI officers are not living up to their responsibilities.
"As the Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at Harvard University, you appear to be the individual principally responsible for advancing the ideal of inclusion, ensuring that all students and faculty, regardless of nationality or faith, feel accepted in the campus environment and student body," Yakym's letter points out. "However, at least one or more incidents on your campus in recent weeks raise questions about the climate of inclusion fostered by the Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging for Israeli and Jewish students and faculty."
Harvard has been a particularly noteworthy example as of late, and not merely because it is supposedly an elite institution. As Townhall covered at the time, Harvard's Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) came out right away with a statement blaming Israel for the October 7 attack. As the identified students face consequences for their actions, such as through rescinded job offers, the university put out a task force to protect those students. Meanwhile, pro-Israel students walking through campus are attacked while demonstrating, as was the case last week when Ibrahim Bharmal, the editor of the Harvard Law Review, confronted a student.
Billionaire donors and alumni, such as Bill Ackerman, have been expressing their displeasure with Harvard and other Ivy League institutions, through letters and even pulling back their donations. Other alumni in Congress, including House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), have also called out their alma mater.
Yakym is thus asking Dr. Charleston and other DEI officials a series of questions, expecting a response by December 8. Many of his questions refer to alarming anti-semitic chants, some of them even calling for the destruction of Israel and Jews, that have actually been heard at protests, including on college campuses:
1. Does the Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging maintain an official, written definition of antisemitism?
* If yes, how does this definition compare with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism?
* If no, why not? How does the Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging evaluate allegations of antisemitism and any potential need for education and awareness about antisemitism?
2. For each of the below statements: Does the Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging classify it as antisemitic? Do you believe that it increases or decreases feelings of inclusion and belonging among Israeli and Jewish students and faculty?
* “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
* “Globalize the Intifada.”
* “One solution, intifada, revolution.”
* “Glory to our martyrs.”
* “Zionism hands off our universities.”
* “Decolonization is not a metaphor.”
* “We don’t want Israel to exist. We don’t want these Zionist counter-protesters to exist.”
* “Zionism has no place on our campus.”
3. For each of the below descriptions of images: Does the Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging classify it as antisemitic? Do you believe that it increases or decreases feelings of inclusion and belonging among Israeli and Jewish students and faculty?
* A trash can with the Star of David in it, captioned, “Keep the world clean”
* An invitation or a poster with a paraglider, hang glider, or paratrooper, which were employed by Hamas as it engaged in the mass slaughter of Israeli civilians on October 7
4. There have been many incidents of students or faculty tearing down posters of men, women, and children believed to have been kidnapped on October 7 or who are otherwise still missing. Does the Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging believe that such actions increase or decrease feelings of inclusion and belonging among Israeli and Jewish students and faculty?
5. How many full- or part-time employees are in the Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging and affiliated entities overall? Of those, how many full- or part-time employees are dedicated to educating and raising awareness about antisemitism, handling allegations of antisemitism, and/or promoting inclusion of Israeli and Jewish students and faculty?
6. Please describe specific actions taken by the Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging to educate and raise awareness about antisemitism since October 7, 2023.
7. Please describe the resources the Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging is providing to Israeli and Jewish students and faculty to ensure they feel included and safe in the campus environment and student body.
8. Please describe resources you are providing to Israeli or Jewish students and faculty to ensure they do not face threats of physical violence, verbal harassment, intimidation, and other actions that directly or indirectly encourage exclusion from the campus environment, including any mechanism to report such incidents should they occur.
"America’s colleges and universities should be equipping the next generation with the skills they need to be better citizens, not fueling the ugly scourge of antisemitism. Taxpayers, parents, and concerned Americans deserve to know how these higher education institutions are responding to some of the most vile and blatant antisemitic displays in recent memory happening on their own campuses," Yakym told Townhall in a statement. "These schools talk about 'inclusion' a lot – it’s up to them to show they are doing everything they can to ensure their Jewish students and faculty feel safe and accepted on campus in the wake of Hamas' barbaric terrorist attacks."
Yakym voted with the majority of House members last week to pass a resolution from Stefanik and Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) to condemn anti-semitism on college campuses. It also specifically called out "the support of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations at institutions of higher education, which may lead to the creation of a hostile environment for Jewish students, faculty, and staff." Twenty-three members voted against the resolution, including 22 Democrats.
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Cambridge’s China complicity
UK-China Transparency (UKCT) was formally launched this week (see Notes, 16 September). Its aim is in its name. There is sadly little transparency about UK-China dealings, especially in our universities. I first reported this problem early in 2020 when I investigated the behaviour of Jesus College, Cambridge, and its China Centre, run by the CCP apologist Professor Peter Nolan. It is probably not a coincidence that the three founders of UKCT – Sir Bernard Silverman, Martin Village and the young freelance reporter Sam Dunning – are all Jesus alumni. The more they looked, the more uncomfortable they became about their college’s advancement of CCP networking and propaganda and its role as the ramp for the courting of the Chinese regime by the whole of Cambridge University.
To coincide with the launch, UKCT has published its investigation of Cambridge’s extensive research links with Huawei, which are cumulatively worth £28 million since 2016. These actually increased after the government opted in 2020 to ban Huawei from core parts of the 5G network. (New engagements are now paused; earlier ones persist.) The work includes sensitive areas with surveillance applications like face and speech recognition. In one case, research papers have been co-written with Huawei and scientists linked to China’s military. Where Cambridge has been compelled to disgorge records, it has sometimes redacted details about the nature of the research.
At the launch, there was discussion of how, under Xi Jinping, the general situation continues to worsen. One theory is that the various property company collapses in China this year serve his turn because they weaken his rivals, including the late Deng Xiaoping’s family. He may believe it is better for China to let foreign investment fall and create a siege economy. This approach has been christened ‘West Korea’.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/cambridges-china-complicity/
************************************************Australia: Fears merit-free hiring in universities and public service could lead to cronyism
A large part of the original rationale for using tests and exams was to give people without personal contacts an equal chance of being hired. Looks like that is being lost. Will hiring now be dependent on whom you know, not what you know? That's pretty sad in a university
Merit-based hiring has been abolished for academics and public servants in Queensland to stamp out “unconscious bias’’, sparking concern about “jobs for mates’’.
Both the Queensland government and Queensland University of Technology are dumping the word “merit’’ from their selection policies, and will instead hire staff based on “suitability’’. Job applicants will have their achievement rated against “opportunity’’.
In a proposed new hiring policy that has angered some academics, QUT will ensure that an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander employee vets any applications from Indigenous jobseekers.
The new rules would require selection panels to assess “the extent to which the person has abilities, aptitude, skills, qualifications, knowledge, experience, and personal qualities relevant to the carrying out of the duties in question’’.
“This includes consideration of achievement relative to opportunity,’’ the draft policy states.
“The panel must consider the diverse ways in which responses may be expressed or demonstrated, including with respect to applicants who are Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples, people from cultural and linguistically diverse backgrounds, applicants who identify as LGBTIQA+, applicants for positions where it is a non-traditional area of employment for women or men, and applicants who have a disability.
“The panel may consider how appointment would achieve organisational equity, diversity, respect and inclusion obligations.’’
One academic, who did not want to be named, questioned whether students should now be “marked based on suitability, rather than merit?’’
“The policy to get rid of merit is bordering on embarrassing,’’ the academic said. “It’s completely disrespectful to tell students who will be charged thousands of dollars for a program that they will be taught by people chosen not on merit, but suitability.’’
Australian Institute for Progress executive director Graham Young said that abolishing merit-based selection at universities and in the public service “will enable cronyism’’.
“Merit is about meeting a set of criteria that is skills-based,’’ he said. “Assessing on suitability allows a move away from that.’’
QUT vice-chancellor Margaret Sheil – the first woman to become a professor of chemistry in Australia and a former chief executive of the Australian Research Council – said the university was “trying to build on the culture of choosing the best possible people for each role’’.
“There’s nothing sinister in it at all,’’ she said. “I’m the anti-cronyism, jobs-for-the-mates champion of all time.’’
Professor Sheil said her university’s existing selection policy was “sort of bureaucratic’’.
“You had to get a score for each candidate against each selection criteria, and trying to get a merit score – that was very hard to apply in any kind of serious modern contemporary recruitment,’’ she said.
“It’s really about trying to move people away a little bit, as many places are, from the notion that merit’s something that’s completely objective – and in the case of academics, numerical – to looking at whether this is the person who’s most suitable to take the role.’’
Professor Sheil said “I still like quirky mathematicians’’. But she said QUT wanted to ensure that staff with stellar academic credentials were also excellent teachers, and respectful to other staff and students as well.
“The best person on merit in terms of CV might be the top researcher in all the publications and the best qualifications, but if you’re not going to actually be interested in teaching students, we don’t want them,’’ she said.
“The reason they’ve got the best CV is they’re not interested in doing anything other than their own research. We want people who are interested in teaching students as well.’’
Professor Sheil also pointed out that the requirement to have an Indigenous staff member screen job applications from Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander applicants, and recommend if they proceed to an interview, was designed to ease pressure on Indigenous staff.
Under the existing policy, selection panels interviewing a First Nations applicant must include an Indigenous staff member.
Professor Sheil said this requirement was placing undue pressure on Indigenous staff members to constantly take part in selection panels.’’
She said the requirement had been imposed “before my time but suspect it was for cultural safety reasons’’.
Professor Sheil said the proposed new hiring rules would look at “the whole person and the whole picture for the person who is applying’’.
“The problem is if you leave people to select on merit, some sort of supposed analytical criteria, they will automatically score the person who looks like them higher,’’ she said.
“I see it all the time, that’s the unconscious bias.
“People talk about merit often to exclude people, not include people.’’
Professor Sheil said the new selection method would ask, “have they got the qualifications to do the job, can they do the job, are they outstanding in whatever they’ve done, and are they suitable for what we want to do?”
“Sometimes that will give you a more diverse field, sometimes it won’t,’’ she said.
QUT is basing its controversial policy on a new hiring rules for Queensland’s public service.
The Queensland Public Service Commission yesterday said that recruitment “must be fair and transparent and directed to the selection of the person best suited to the position’’.
“The best person must be selected for a role, and this is consistent with the concept of merit in the previous directive and legislation,’’ a spokeswoman said.
“Where there is a mandatory qualification for a role, the person must have that qualification to be appointed.’’\
A new Queensland public service directive, issued last month, states that selection panels need to identify the person “who is best suited to the position‘’ – replacing the previous requirement for appointments ”based on merit’’.
Panels must “consider equity and diversity and cultural considerations‘’, as part of a ”holistic assessment’’ to choose the ”eligible person best suited to the position’’.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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