Saturday, April 22, 2006

Professor Who Trashed Abortion Display Advises evading the police

Post lifted from Alain's newsletter

Highland Heights, KY -- A university professor who was forced to resign after leading a group of pro-abortion students in vandalizing a pro-life display has attacked pro-life advocates in a private email to the students involved. The email also encourages the students to "make it hard"; for police investigating the vandalism to find them. News of the email is surfacing just hours after Northern Kentucky University professor Dr. Sally Jacobson issued an apology for her actions.



Jacobson apologized Tuesday evening in an interview with a local television station, but told the NKU student newspaper she will no longer grant interviews on the advice of her attorney.

Meanwhile, Jacobson emailed the pro-abortion students involved in the vandalism and urged them to obtain attorneys and to resist being charged by police in the matter. She worries and charges will aid the pro-life movement.

"If you are named, my advice is to get your attorney to plead you down to a misdemeanor", she wrote, according to The Northerner student paper. "The well-funded Right to Life groups that are pushing for this need felony convictions, I believe, in order to file civil suits for damages"

Jacobson also told the students about the current investigation the NKU police department is conducting, even encouraging the pro-abortion students to make it difficult for police to locate them: "In the meantime, the campus police continue their investigation", she said. "If you have not yet been interrogated, you do not have to talk to them without an attorney. You can make it hard to find you. Again, I am so sorry."



Jacobson and the students involved could face as much as a Class D felony for their actions. Charges have not yet been filed against those involved in the destruction of the pro-life display but NKU Officer Rob Yelton told the student paper they are forthcoming. "The [pro-life] group has indicated that they are willing to press charges", he said.

However, The Northerner reported that the bulk of the charges will be directed at Jacobson. "At this time, we don't anticipate the students being charged", Lt. Col. Jeffrey Martin said. "They were intimidated by an authority figure into believing that this was not a criminal act".

Commonwealth Attorney Jack Porter, the local prosecutor, will make the final decision on the charges, and the officers indicated they thought he would grant the students immunity but charge Jacobson for her part in the vandalism. Jacobson clearly hopes this is the case, according to the paper, as she wrote the students that she wants to help them avoid prosecution: "I want to do everything I can to keep any of you from being specifically named", she said. "And I am very sorry I got you involved in this".

Jacobson, whose classes have been given to other professors to complete for the semester, also warned the pro-abortion students to stay away from her office on campus.






AMERICA HATRED: OBSERVATIONS FROM A FORMER STUDENT AT THE ELITE BROWN UNIVERSITY

Excerpts from an interview with Travis Rowley, author of "Out of Ivy"

I was a junior by the time I finally decided to criticize particular segments of the campus. Again, I was a football player, and that took up a lot of my time. So rather than immediately join some leftist student-group, I was forced to be a spectator of campus activism at first. There was always a lot of controversy on Brown's campus, and I spent a lot of time observing the behavior of my classmates. I had an immediate repulsion to them for a lot of reasons. It wasn't that I was pro-life, and they were pro-choice. Or that I was against affirmative action, and they were in favor of it. Those weren't even opinions that I had formed or cared about. My objection to liberal activism was more about my classmates' zealotry, and the fact that I knew I was forbidden to disagree or disapprove of them. In other words, I had a negative reaction to the ethic and demeanor of liberals before I even disagreed with liberal thought. I found Brown's leading liberal forces to be deviant, oppressive, and improper before I reached any other conclusions. Ironically, they were viciously labeling everyone but themselves as mean, dumb, and racist. But I saw it in reverse. In fact, Out of Ivy documents the campus left's hypocrisy, and their readiness to lie, smear, stereotype, and discriminate --all accompanied by their assertion that they were the fluffy-hearted champions of tolerance and understanding.

The incident that triggered my involvement in campus controversies was the 2000 presidential election. Some Brown students, including members of the Brown Democrats and the International Socialist Organization, traveled down to President Bush's Inauguration to protest his controversial victory. When they returned to Providence they were bragging about giving President Bush the middle finger as he walked by them. The entire campus seemed to think of them as heroes returning from some sort of glorious charge against evil. But again, I saw it in reverse. So I wrote an opinion piece for the Brown Daily Herald that condemned the protest, and very simply observed the indecency of flicking off the President of the United States. The reaction to my column was unbelievable. I received harassing phone calls, and was repeatedly called a racist, a sexist, and a homophobe-for saying that you shouldn't give the President the finger!

As it turned out, this over-reaction to what I saw as an opinion grounded in decency and common sense was typical liberal temperament. Brown's campus left wasn't much different from many other leftist groups. They made it a habit to smear anyone who disagreed with them on any issue. And from that point on, I considered myself engaged in a battle with campus liberals. I continued to criticize them, and tried to discover the roots of their behavior and beliefs. And because I suddenly found myself in the middle of campus controversies, I was also forced to quickly define my own values in order to argue effectively against them. Here is where readers are able to follow the political development of a politically na‹ve student, armed only with gut feelings and his own personal sense of right and wrong.

Interviewer: What would you say are the key ingredients of leftist ideology?

Rowley: The immediate ones that come to mind are Hypocrisy, the belief that there are one set of rules for leftists, and another set for everyone else. And Elitism, a sense that they are not only smarter than everyone else, but are inherently more caring than the populace, and that they are the only ones who feel passionate about their beliefs. But I truly believe that the underlying driving force behind leftist philosophy is a disdain for America. In fact, the entire book leads up to this one conclusion. The book is peppered with entertaining stories about my clashes with various components of the campus left, but that's merely the setting I have used to deliver the more important message concerning the intentions of hard-core liberalism. Brown's campus left wasn't made up of mild American liberals. This is the Far Left we're talking about. They are much more devious than the person who simply believes in taxing the wealthy a little more than we tax the poor. I didn't know it at the time, but I was arguing with Communists, Marxists, anti-Christians, and anti-Americans. Hatred for America was a very difficult scheme to decipher for a politically ignorant student, but I eventually found the campus left to be operating off of the intellectual premise that American liberty, Christianity, capitalism, and the United States were the root causes of all world tragedies.

To prove this, the campus left made a tireless and incessant effort to undermine America by constantly reminding everyone of certain people's claim to victim-hood, oppression caused by the American system. Homosexuals were victims. Minorities were victims. Women were victims. Muslims were victims. Indians were victims. Anyone who dared to question this premise-that certain people were injured by America's past and present-was doomed for what liberals saw as the appropriate social consequences. Their problem was, that once they marked particular people as victims, they were forced to point out the perpetrators who had inflicted such harm. If you listened closely, you would hear them saying that it was straight, white, and patriotic Christians who were to blame-the American mainstream. 9/11 couldn't have more perfectly demonstrated the reason why liberals fought so hard to maintain an image of victim-hood for certain types of people.

They desired to create a natural impulse for everyone that would prompt them to blame their own country at any turn of tragedy. I was a senior when the World Trade Center was bombed, and no other event could have exposed leftist intentions better than an incident that prompted America to defend itself. Only a few days after the terrorist attacks Brown professors and students, fearing our military retaliation, began to assert our role in causing the attacks. They were unashamedly screaming that we deserved what happened to us, that America was also a terrorist state, and that America causes pain and suffering throughout the world.

Interviewer: Tell us your thoughts on David Horowitz's fight for academic freedom. What do you think about the academic bill of rights and the whole battle overall to bring intellectual diversity to the campus?

Rowley: I've always kept an eye on Mr. Horowitz and his skirmishes with campus radicals. Actually, Mr. Horowitz's clash with Brown's campus left in 2001-concerning reparations for slavery-was one of the events that inspired me to pay more attention to my alma mater's political climate. No other event could have more perfectly exposed the type of dishonest political games Brown students are taught to play, and just how far the University is willing to go to enslave the minds of its students.

That's why I chronicle the Horowitz controversy -- as it's called at Brown -- in Out of Ivy. When Mr. Horowitz was finally allowed to speak at my alma mater in 2003 he told the audience that you can't get a good education when your school is only telling you one half of the story. That statement made so much sense to me. Most of all, it seemed to be a statement of humility, asserting that nobody has a monopoly over truth. I found this to be the exact opposite attitude of Brown's liberals. Up until that point, anyone who disagreed with them on any issue was deemed stupid or racist -- no questions asked. Mr. Horowitz's lecture was a deep breath of fresh air to Brown conservatives, despite the fact that the campus had to be dragged through one of the most venomous debates ever seen on Providence's College Hill. It actually prompted a handful of recent alumni to form the Foundation for Intellectual Diversity, an organization dedicated to continuing the fight for intellectual tolerance on Brown's campus.

Because I've seen the problems Mr. Horowitz speaks of first hand, I find it difficult to disagree with him on these issues. He seems to have a firm grasp on the history and evolution of higher education. What I have attempted to do with Out of Ivy is take readers through the halls of one elite university, with the hope that it will be a testament to what Mr. Horowitz has been saying all along about the sad state of the academy. His academic bill of rights is hardly an extreme proposition. It may be revolutionary, but not extreme. It's a principled stance that merely reminds campus citizens that colleges are not supposed to be political parties. Students should not be coerced into thinking a certain way by professors who constantly demonize particular political figures, and mock certain political ideals. Professors aren't paid to dismiss their students into political rallies that conflict with class time. Tuition payments have never been paid to ensure that students can go to class to learn what a horrible nation they live in. Aside from the importance of the call for intellectual diversity that would counter leftist philosophy, Mr. Horowitz has also been pointing out that a college classroom has a unique and specific purpose, one that doesn't include political indoctrination. Yet, Mr. Horowitz encounters such fierce opposition on nearly every college campus precisely because universities are exactly what he accuses them of being. The intellectual dominion leftists have on these campuses is crucial to the survival of their agendas. The last thing they need is honest and open debate, and for leftist professors to be restricted from corrupting the education of their students.






Australian Prime Minister condemns 'rubbish' postmodern teaching

John Howard believes the postmodern approach to literature being taught in schools is "rubbish" and is considering tying education funding to ending the "gobbledegook" taught in some states. The Prime Minister made the threat after accusing the state education authorities of "dumbing down" the English syllabus and succumbing to political correctness. "I feel very, very strongly about the criticism that many people are making that we are dumbing down the English syllabus," Mr Howard said.

Australia's most distinguished literary scholar, Leonie Kramer, yesterday agreed with the Prime Minister's criticism of how English is taught in high schools. Dame Leonie, professor emeritus in Australian literature at the University of Sydney, said what worried her was "the notion that you have to read, let us say Shakespeare, in relation to contemporary preoccupations such as race and class".

Education Minister Julie Bishop has raised concerns over Western Australia's outcomes-based education system, claiming it is "inevitable" that standards will fall. When asked about the "outcomes-based" program, Mr Howard replied: "That is gobbledegook - what does that mean?" Ms Bishop is expected to drive the reform push at the next meeting with state education ministers, scheduled for either June or July. The minister, who is overseas at present, is keen to push for greater national consistency on English curriculums, amid concerns that senior high school students are not being sufficiently challenged on traditional texts.

Mr Howard may also seek to have education standards placed on the agenda for the next Council of Australian Governments, also scheduled to be held in June. But senior government sources yesterday played down suggestions that Canberra would seek to "stand over" the states in the public debate over education standards. Mr Howard said: "I share the views of many people about the so-called postmodernism ... I just wish that independent education authority didn't succumb on occasions to the political correctness it appears to succumb to."

The criticism of teaching standards followed revelations in The Weekend Australian that a prestigious Sydney school, SCEGGS Darlinghurst, had asked students to interpret Othello from Marxist, feminist and racial perspectives. "I think there's evidence of that (dumbing down) in different parts of the country ... when the, what I might call the traditional texts, are treated no differently from pop cultural commentary, as appears to be the case in some syllabuses," Mr Howard told the ABC.

Western Australia's introduction of a Year 12 English exam that fails to penalise students for poor spelling or grammar and asks students to compare two film posters but not read a book has also been blasted by Canberra. Rather than dictating what students should know by a specified time and then grading them, outcomes-based education focuses on what students are able to do.

Mr Howard's intervention drew a stinging response from the states and Opposition Leader Kim Beazley. "Instead of telling everyone what they should read, John Howard should make his ministers read cables about the bribes to Saddam Hussein," Mr Beazley said. Queensland Education Minister Rod Welford also accused the Prime Minister of trying to divert attention away from the AWB kickbacks scandal. Mr Welford said Mr Howard's blanket denigration of school curriculums was an attempt to divert attention from "other pressing issues, such as the appalling unethical dealings by AWB, over which he has presided". "The fact is, in Queensland we do value the traditional literature as well as more popular media," Mr Welford said.

NSW Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt indicated her state's syllabus was more likely to comply with Mr Howard's view because it had a strong base in classical English literature "NSW has compulsory Shakespeare in Years 9 to 10 and for the Year 12 advanced English courses," she told The Australian yesterday. "Other authors on the HSC reading list include Chaucer, Yeats, Wordsworth and Jane Austen. The more modern classics include George Orwell, David Williamson, David Malouf and Michael Ondaatje."

Victoria's Education Minister Lynn Kosky accused Mr Howard of being "ill-informed" on the issue. "The Prime Minister is out of touch with what is going on in Victorian schools and what students are reading," Ms Kosky said.

Mr Howard's statement was embraced by anti-OBE campaigners yesterday, who said their views had been vindicated. PLATO WA co-founder Greg Williams said Mr Howard's comments were an accurate description of the controversial system that is currently being implemented in Western Australia. "It is not gobbledegook to everyone but it is gobbledegook to the teachers, it's gobbledegook to the students and it's gobbledegook to the parents. These three groups are the only ones that matter when it comes to outcomes-based education."

Teacher of literature at the University of Western Australia Peter Morgan said many teachers were just as confused and disappointed as their students at the shift from teaching English literature to focusing on literary theory and its sub-branches. Associate Professor Morgan said the English literature syllabus in Western Australia was being replaced by a course called "Texts, traditions and cultures", which had led to a large degree of dissatisfaction and low morale among teachers. "Literary theory covers a broad range of cultural and social theory from Marxism to post-structuralism, feminism and queer theory," he said. "It's very obscure. It encourages students to use buzzwords and jargon to cover up that they have no idea what they're talking about. "Teachers are disappointed they are not teaching literature any more. They feel the subject has been hijacked by those who want to teach about race, gender and Marxism, rather than about literature. "I read what the students write, and hear what the teachers have to say, and there is a lot of confusion."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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