I remember how it was -- JR
Has Cambridge University broken out of its woke straightjacket? College refuses to fly ‘divisive’ Pride flag
The fourth-oldest Cambridge college has sparked outrage after ditching the LGBTQ+ flag in favour of its own one.
Gonville and Caius College Cambridge, also known as Keys College, was founded in 1348 and is one of the wealthiest at the revered university.
The College said while it was committed to ending discrimination it felt just flying one flag would avoid having to fly a different standard for every good cause.
It said its own flag was already 'a symbol which unites all in the Caius community'.
Yet students hit out at the decision, saying it left them feeling 'betrayed' by the 673-year-old college.
The multicoloured LGBTQ+ flag had only just been raised at the start of February to mark LGBT History Month.
Natasha Naidu, a Masters student at Gonville and Caius, said she was left 'feeling betrayed' by the decision.
She added it was 'not the great start to LGBT History Month I anticipated at Caius'.
Anthony Bridgen, a queer PhD student at Gonville and Caius, said he was 'bitterly disappointed' at the announcement.
He added: 'This regressive decision is of huge detriment to work to improve access, diversity and equality at Caius over the past years.
'It is symbolic of an entrenched, majority cis male, majority white, majority fusty fellowship who neither know nor want to know about the injustices faced by minorities.'
At the start of the month the College posted on social media: 'The Progress Pride Flag is flying above Caius to mark the first day of LGBT History Month'.
After Thursday's announcement, Gonville and Caius PhD student Juliana Cudini replied: 'Not proud to be a Caian today..
'I don't join the celebration in this post when it is so rife with hypocrisy and cowardly, thinly veiled prejudice.'
Students were quick to voice their displeasure at the decision by the College. Masters student Natasha Naidu said it left her 'feeling betrayed' while PhD student Anthony Bridgen said he was 'bitterly disappointed' at the announcement
Students were quick to voice their displeasure at the decision by the College. Masters student Natasha Naidu said it left her 'feeling betrayed' while PhD student Anthony Bridgen said he was 'bitterly disappointed' at the announcement
The Master of the College, Professor Pippa Rogerson, said: 'Gonville and Caius College remains firmly committed to making College a place where everyone feels welcome, and where everyone can thrive.
'It is incumbent on us all to make changes to improve diversity and eradicate discrimination and we are working as a community at Caius to support and boost representation.'
In a statement, the college said: 'Gonville and Caius College is committed to improving diversity and eradicating discrimination.
'The College flag is a symbol which unites all in the Caius community. 'Choosing to fly only the College flag avoids concerns regarding political neutrality and the difficulty of choosing between the plurality of good causes for which a flag could be flown.'
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Tennessee university reinstates professor acquitted of ties to China
The University of Tennessee at Knoxville has reinstated a professor who was acquitted of federal charges that had accused him of hiding his relationship with a Chinese university while receiving NASA research grants.
Nanotechnology expert Anming Hu returned to UT this week with tenure, his lawyer Phil Lomonaco told the Knoxville News Sentinel. He received $300,000 worth of funding to restart his research program and has been provided similar lab space.
Hu was arrested in February 2020, charged with wire fraud and making false statements. The case went to trial last June, but the jury deadlocked. Prosecutors had filed a notice that they intended to retry the case, but the judge acquitted Hu in September.
The arrest was part of a broader Justice Department crackdown under then-President Donald Trump’s administration against university researchers suspected of concealing their ties to Chinese institutions.
Hu began working for UT Knoxville in 2013 and later was invited by another professor to help apply for a research grant from NASA. That grant application was not successful, but two later applications were. A 2012 law forbids NASA from collaborating with China or Chinese companies. The government has interpreted that prohibition to include Chinese universities, and Hu was a faculty member at the Beijing University of Technology in addition to his position at UT.
Prosecutors tried to show that Hu deliberately hid his position at the Chinese university when applying for the NASA-funded research grants. Hu’s attorney, Philip Lomonaco, argued at trial that Hu didn’t think he needed to list his part-time summer job on a disclosure form and said no one at UT ever told him otherwise.
The judge ruled that, even assuming Hu intended to deceive about his affiliation with that second university, there is no evidence that Hu intended to harm NASA. The judge also noted that NASA got the research from Hu that it paid for, and there was no evidence that Hu took any money from China or had anyone in China work on the projects.
Additionally, the judge cited evidence that NASA’s funding restrictions were unclear.
Lomonaco told the Knoxville News Sentinel after the acquittal that Hu wanted his job back.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/tennessee-university-reinstates-professor-acquitted-china
****************************************************Why colleges don’t care about free speech
Georgetown University’s law school violated its own speech policy last week when it placed Ilya Shapiro, a newly hired administrator, on leave over a tweet that offended some students. Why do universities make grandiloquent commitments to freedom of speech, then fail to honour them? It isn’t so much an issue of ideology as a problem of incentives.
Georgetown’s policy states that speech “may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or ill conceived.”
Yet that’s what happened when Mr. Shapiro tweeted that the candidate he viewed as “objectively” most qualified for the Supreme Court “alas doesn’t fit into latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman.”
The dean of Georgetown Law, William Treanor, announced that Mr. Shapiro’s comment was “at odds with everything we stand for at Georgetown Law” and ordered “an investigation into whether he violated our policies and expectations on professional conduct, non-discrimination, and anti-harassment.”
Regardless of Mr. Treanor’s political views, he has every reason to do this. University administrators get no reward for upholding abstract principles. Their incentive is to quell on-campus outrage and bad press as quickly as possible. Success is widely praised, but there is no punishment for failing to uphold the university’s commitment to free speech.
The solution is to create an incentive for schools to protect open inquiry — the fear of lawsuits. First, universities should add a “safe harbour” provision to their speech policies stating: “The university will summarily dismiss any allegation that an individual or group has violated a university policy if the allegation is based solely on the individual’s or group’s expression of religious, philosophical, literary, artistic, political, or scientific viewpoints.”
This language would be contractually binding. Second, free-speech advocates should organise pro bono legal groups to sue schools that violate the safe-harbour provision. This would make it affordable for suppressed parties to bring suits over the violation of their contractual rights.
University counsel, whose primary job is to protect the institution from being sued, would then have incentive to curb administrators’ behaviour. They might require that a
legations of harassment be reviewed by a member of the counsel’s office who knows how to distinguish complaints about speech from genuine harassment. They almost certainly would revise the university’s antiharassment training to stress that students and faculty shouldn’t file complaints based solely on the content of the viewpoint being expressed. These and other steps they might take would give universities’ abstract commitments to freedom of speech some real bite.
In the absence of damage awards, university administrators won’t act against their own interests merely to uphold an abstract commitment to free speech. The threat of such awards would make universities like Georgetown put their money where their mouths are.
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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)
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