Academia Fans The Flames Of Social Disorder

Those of us who thought higher education could do little damage while it was shut down were sadly mistaken.

As Antifa-led demonstrators burned and looted American cities in the wake of the tragic murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis cop, academia, like the rest of the American Left, never let a crisis go to waste, even one they helped engender.

“Fittingly, the ideological handmaiden of this violence — academia — has already sprung into action,” Heather Mac Donald wrote in City Journal on May 31, 2020. “The chancellors and presidents of Harvard, the University of Arizona, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale, among others, released statements over the weekend assuring their black students of their schools’ commitment to racial equity, in light of the George Floyd death — an event wholly unrelated to the academic.”

“No college leader denounced the violence.” City Journal is published by The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

In fact, Rudy Fichtenbaum, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) saw in the riots an opportunity to bash police everywhere. “The AAUP supports the right of all citizens to engage in peaceful protests and calls for an end to police violence against protesters,” he wrote on the Academe blog maintained by the AAUP.

Notably, the avowedly progressive John K. Wilson, a contributing editor at Academe, took a markedly different position: “Too many people on the left revere the street protest as the epitome of working for social change,” he wrote. “They harken back to the days of the Civil Rights Movement and imagine that protests on the streets are an effective tool for social change. That’s rarely the case anymore. The truth is that most street protests are useless, and the rest of them (like all of the protests this week) are usually worse than useless.”

Another contributing editor to Academe, Hank Reichman, downplayed the violence and tried to apportion blame across the political spectrum even though conservatives present at the demonstration are really hard to find, unless they’re cleverly disguised as Antifa organizers.

“No right-thinking person can fail to condemn the looting, arson, and window-smashing that have marred the overwhelmingly peaceful protests that have swept the nation for the past week in the wake of the brutal slaying of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers,” he wrote.  “These criminal actions may have been carried out by a handful of political extremists, left and right, who probably envision these events as prelude to some fantastical revolution or civil war.”

For his part, Fichtenbaum did take blame for the violence, sort of, and offered academia as a solution to the problem it helped create: “We also recognize that our institutions of higher education have been part of the problem, but they can be part of the solution by marshaling the expertise of faculty and the energy of students in developing meaningful approaches to mitigating racism and inequality in our society.”

Apparently, academia sees in the riots a more reliable source of cash than a federal bailout. “UCLA’s chancellor Gene Block, as well as the school’s $400,000 a year Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and a parade of deans, announced that the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and the school’s legions of Equity Advisors would be coming up with new programs for ‘virtual reflection spaces’ in which to ‘humbly acknowledge the pain,’” Mac Donald writes. “The school’s Resources for Racial Trauma would be beefed up.”

“The academic diversity bureaucracy has now been given a whole new excuse for existence and can be assured that it will escape the cost-cutting chopping block, even as universities beg the federal government for more coronavirus bailout money.”

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La: Nicholls State University president has no idea how the First Amendment works

In a June 8 email to his students and faculty, Nicholls State University President Jay Clune wrote that “[f]ree speech does not protect hate speech.”

That’s not true.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reminded Clune Friday that there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment and that his false characterization of free speech not only impermissibly chills speech, but can open up the public university to costly lawsuits and criticism from civil liberties organizations.

“It’s a common refrain — that the First Amendment doesn’t protect hate speech,” said Adam Steinbaugh, author of FIRE’s letter to Nicholls. “The problem is, that’s wrong. Some hateful expression is not protected because it falls into one of the other exceptions to the First Amendment, but there is no categorical ‘hate speech’ exception. Everybody has their own definition of ‘hate speech,’ and a university president should not mislead students and faculty about what the Constitution permits him to do.”

FIRE’s letter examines the main problem with Clune’s assertion: that there are very few exceptions to the First Amendment — and “hate speech” is not one of them. FIRE has long encouraged students to combat speech they find offensive with their own speech, not calls for censorship. However well-intended Clune’s goals might be, they will almost certainly erode the rights of all students and faculty at the public university, including black, indigenous, and people of color.

As a public institution, Nicholls State is legally required to uphold student and faculty First Amendment rights. The university holds a “yellow light” free speech rating from FIRE, meaning it maintains policies that could too easily encourage administrative abuse, arbitrary application, and censorship.

From FIRE’s letter: “In times of great social and political upheaval, our governmental and educational institutions face substantial pressure to foreclose on expression protected by the First Amendment. This, however, is when institutions must be most vigilant in refusing to do so. Penalizing protected expression is not a cure for the underlying challenges faced by society, and abandoning a robust defense of freedom of expression will inure to the detriment of rights across political, social, and ideological spectrums.”

Instead of promising “the swiftest, harshest action” in stomping out constitutionally-protected speech, Clune should swiftly assure his students that Nicholls State will not try to dismantle student and faculty First Amendment rights, and instead find other ways to address student and faculty concerns about discrimination.

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Australia: 'There is so much fear in the lyrics': School children are forced to learn a chilling song about the killer coronavirus

Parents are furious after children as young as seven were forced to learn a disturbing song about 'people dying alone' from COVID-19 .

Year two students, aged between seven and eight, were taught the 'COVID-19 song' at Bogangar Public School in Tweed Heads in northern NSW for a month.

Outraged that children were learning the distressing song, Brenda Steel shared a picture of the lyric sheet to Facebook on Sunday.    

'This (the song lyrics) was pulled out of my friend's son's bag. They are learning this for assembly. YEAR 2. This is nothing but mind control to instill fear and conformity,' Ms Steel captioned the post. 

The song's morbid lyrics describe 'people dying alone, connected to family only by phone' due to social distancing restrictions. 'News was scary tonight, the future is not so bright. Invisible killer stalking its prey, message was clear, stay home today!' the lyrics read. 'We've been forced into the ring against this pandemic monster thing - officials set out to control, protecting the young and the old.'   

After building up fear, the end message of the song is for children to practice social distancing by not congregating and isolating when possible.

Mother Rachel Mathison said she was 'shocked' her year two son Kash was learning the song for a month before she found out.

'It's a very depressing song, there's so much fear in the lyrics,' Ms Mathison told The Daily Telegraph. 'I felt awful when I read it so I can only imagine how an eight-year-old would feel not only reading it, but having to memorise it.' 

'The song's made up by the school should now be sent to parents for feedback – it's actually a very sad day when you need to start monitoring the activities that go on at your local school.'

After considerable backlash from parents, Bogangar Public School Principal Muriel Kelly apologised to parents in a letter. 'It has come to our attention that the Year 2 song students have started learning is a sensitive topic,' Mrs Kelly wrote in the letter.

'The students were entering the Australian Children's Music Foundation singing and songwriting competition. 'To enable this to continue, a new song is being co-written with year 2 under the guidance of their teachers.'

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