Wednesday, June 01, 2022



The city must stop CUNY Law using taxpayer funds to target Jewish students

The time has come for New York City to take a closer look at the City University of New York School of Law and ask itself whether the institution is meeting its mission for all New Yorkers.

CUNY Law is the only one of the metro area’s 13 law schools subsidized by New York City taxpayer dollars. With in-state tuition just $15,450 per year, the school’s mission is to provide an affordable legal education to the city’s diverse student population — many of whom are planning careers in the public interest.

It has more than met that mission with respect to certain ethnic groups but failed entirely with respect to others. Specifically, it has fostered a culture that has isolated and excluded many Jewish and Israeli students — deterring them from even applying.

In the past year alone, CUNY Law’s Student Government Association passed a resolution to ban Hillel and other Jewish institutions from campus. The faculty council voted in favor of boycotting, divesting and sanctioning Israel — despite a state order forbidding this very conduct. And the school recently selected a student keynote speaker for graduation who, in her own words, seeks to “globalize the Intifada.”

If CUNY Law were a private law school, perhaps it would be within its discretion to take such a strong anti-Israel stance. But as the city’s only public law school, CUNY Law must be open to all New Yorkers. The chosen commencement speaker must speak to everybody. And events targeted to the entire student body, such as the school’s graduation ceremony, must be made pleasant for members of all ethnic groups.

I write this not to take a position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which, no doubt, is complicated by longstanding territorial struggles that emerge out of British colonialism, but rather as a CUNY professor deeply troubled by CUNY Law’s willingness to foster a hostile environment to nearly an entire ethnic group — any entire ethnic group.

As a Baruch College law professor, I regularly advise my students on applying to law school. As much as CUNY Law’s tuition price presents students with a great opportunity, I cannot in good faith encourage anyone to apply to a school where one ethnic group is targeted for isolation and exclusion. It harkens back to ugly days of an earlier era when private law schools around the country placed quotas on Jewish student admission.

Without immediate intervention, there is little reason to believe CUNY Law will change any time soon. Faculty self-governance provides schools with broad discretion when hiring new faculty. Thus, much as there has been historic exclusion of black, female and other minority faculty members at many law schools throughout the nation, there is a dearth of young faculty at CUNY Law supportive of Israel. One can only imagine this is a conscious decision by current faculty who oppose Israel’s very existence.

The path forward for legal education, of course, is not to exclude individuals of diverse ethnicities or viewpoints but to preach inclusion and tolerance. While CUNY Law student groups are more than within their right to invite speakers to campus who support the BDS movement, pro-Israel groups must similarly be given a forum to invite speakers who share the Zionist perspective. A public institution that places content-based restrictions on political speech presumably runs afoul of protections granted by the US Constitution’s First and Fourteenth Amendments.

As the only law school funded with New York City taxpayer dollars, moreover, CUNY Law has an ethical duty to build an environment that makes Jewish and Israeli students, like all other students, feel welcome on campus. Similarly, it has a legal duty to comply with New York state Executive Order 157, which prevents “all agencies and departments over which the Governor has executive authority” from engaging in the boycott of Israel.

Hence CUNY Law fails to meet its mission both as a law school and a New York City taxpayer-funded institution. As such, the city needs to step in and correct the school’s leadership shortcomings — ensuring that the rights and well-being of all students, including Jewish and pro-Israel students, are adequately protected.

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Kirk Cameron: Public schools grooming kids with critical race theory, 'sexual chaos,' and 'racial confusion'

Award-winning actor Kirk Cameron blasted America's public schools for becoming breeding grounds for far-left progressive agendas, including critical race theory, Nikole Hannah-Jones' 1619 Project, and gender ideology.

"The problem is that public school systems have become so bad. It's sad to say they're doing more for grooming, for sexual chaos and the progressive left than any real educating about the things that most of us want to teach our kids," he told Fox News Digital. The solution to the problem, he said, was for parents to take the lead on their children's education and teach them at home. To make the case, the award-winning actor referenced his upcoming movie, "The Homeschool Awakening."

The movie follows the journey of about 17 homeschooling families who respond to misconceptions and stereotypes. In the film, Cameron also discusses his journey to homeschool his six children with his wife, Chelsea.

Cameron's father, grandmother, and grandfather were teachers. He stressed that there are many excellent teachers in the U.S., but the school system is holding them back from being a "light in the darkness, [and] to pass on the kinds of values and virtues that made this the freest, strongest, most prosperous nation in the whole world."

Cameron takes issue with the perspective that a child's education should be left solely to the so-called experts, without parents' input. "And that's just a fundamental difference in the way that we look at. Who has been entrusted with the sacred responsibility of raising our children? Is it the parents or is it the government?"

He went on to strongly criticize "those who are rotting out the minds and souls of America's children" and said they were "spreading a terminal disease, not education."

"And you can take your pick. Just go down the list. The things that are destroying the family, destroying the church, destroying love for our great country: critical race theory, teaching kids to pick their pronouns and decide whether they want to be a boy or a girl, The 1619 Project," he said.

Cameron said the "genesis" of creating, what would become a project that spanned over two years, was the novel coronavirus pandemic. At that time, he said, parents were finally starting to see the things schools were teaching their kids.

"If we send our children to Rome to be educated … we shouldn't be surprised if they come back Romans," Cameron said. "If we want them … to love God and love their neighbor and feel gratitude and thankful that they live in the United States of America, the freest country on earth, then you've got to teach them those things …

I realized that there was no better way for our family to do that … then to bring them home and join in with this rich, robust community, with tons of curriculum to to to be able to have the flexibility and freedom to raise our kids the way we wanted them to be raised."

"Homeschool was not on our radar screen because we had these misconceptions and stereotypes like so many people do. Like, you know, that's for like Quakers and the Amish, and how could you possibly teach your kids enough so that they get into college? What about socialization?" Cameron said. However, after going through the process, Cameron learned that his children were able to socialize with people of all ages, and that the world was his kids' classroom.

"When you're together as a family … you're able to travel, … [and] you're not locked into a schedule that everyone else is locked into, … you can discover your own individuality and uniqueness … And it really lends itself to a healthy, flourishing community in your home," he said.'

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Australia: Murdoch University will review its controversial decision implemented last year to stop offering majors in maths, physics and chemistry, according to new vice-chancellor Andrew Deeks

Sanity returns. Crazy Finnish lady gone to Ireland. Lucky Ireland

He distanced himself from the decision made in 2020 under former vice-chancellor Eeva Leinonen, saying “it was perhaps a particular view of the management at the time”.

“It wasn’t a view of the broader academic community,” said Professor Deeks, who started as vice-chancellor in April.

The changes, which also curtailed Murdoch’s engineering degrees, abandoned the majors previously offered in maths, physics and chemistry in favour of offering less specialist STEM subjects more broadly.

The Australian Institute of Physics and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute – both accrediting bodies for university courses – said at the time that they “strongly objected” to the move.

Professor Deeks, who is by background a civil engineer, said the maths, physics and chemistry majors had been suspended rather than cancelled completely.

He said he had asked to see the business case for bringing them back, as well as other subjects such as Indonesian, radio, theatre and drama that were cut as part of Covid cost-saving measures.

“I’ve put the challenge to the heads of discipline right the way across the university to go back and have another look at this and see where it makes sense,” Professor Deeks said.

“I’ve said to bring back programs if they will work or to bring back replacements which are enhanced for the current age.”

He said Murdoch would not be focused solely on STEM but “more of the STEAM concept (science, technology, engineering, arts and maths) of ensuring we have that engagement with the humanities and social sciences”.

In an interview with The Australian Professor Deeks said Murdoch University was now on a different course to when it sued a whistleblower staff member, Gerd Schroder-Turk, in 2019 after he questioned the university’s standards and revealed that international students who were not academically ready for their courses were being enrolled via a questionable education agent.

The university withdrew the action against Professor Schroder-Turk, a physics academic who is also a member of the university’s governing body, in 2020.

“I think that was a very unfortunate incident in the university’s history. There were obviously some failings which were revealed at that time,” Professor Deeks said.

“The university’s taken very strong action on the back of that and has put in place robust processes to ensure the quality of all the students that we’re admitting, and especially the international students and especially students that would be coming to us through agents.

“We’re no longer working with the particular agent concerned.”

He said he was meeting regularly with Professor Schroder-Turk, who continues as a member of the university’s Senate.

”It was an unfortunate decision by the then management at the university to pursue one of its academics legally. I can assure you that under my watch we will not be going in that direction.” Professor Deeks said.

As proof of the university’s new direction he pointed to the fact that the higher education regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, had renewed Murdoch’s registration for the full seven years in March after last year limiting it to four years registration while it demonstrated “the effective implementation of improvements”.

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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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