Arab Muslim Foreigners and Illegals Stoke Campus Anti-Semitism. What are they doing in our country?

Dov Fischer

When a bunch of animals at Massachusetts Institute of Technology barred entrance to Lobby 7, the main access to the university, illegally trespassing, MIT’s gutless president initially announced she would suspend the criminal trespassers. Then, presumably after consulting with whatever DEI and Black Lives Matter consultants she needs to please, she melted faster than the Wicked Witch of the West during Hurricane Hillary. No suspension.

Why the change? Uh, “visa concerns.”

I have been writing this for years because, as an Orthodox rabbi, I have a built-in anti-Semitism Geiger counter. The outbreak of overt Jew hatred on American campuses directly results from our vast importing of Arab and other Muslim foreign and illegal students. Just look at Europe. We have known since 9/11 that they don’t belong here, and their visas would be canceled if suspended from school.

We bring in Muslim Arab students from Saudi Arabia, they attend our air pilot classes, and then we wonder why we lost 2,753 at the World Trade Center and 224 at the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. In 2021–2022, we took in 18,206 from Saudi Arabia; 11,779 from Nepal; 10,597 from Bangladesh; 9,295 from Iran (!); 8,772 from Pakistan; and 5,923 from Kuwait. That’s over 60,000 just from those. Foreign students are golden geese for universities because they pay full freight, no affirmative action or other scholarships.

We have heard about the 30-plus Harvard student groups who signed their support for ISIS-Hamas. Not everyone at that campus supports Islamist terror. First, there are the Chinese kids who miraculously manage to get in despite the racist Harvard Chinese Exclusion Acts, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023). They almost all are serious-minded, nose-to-the-grindstone, hard-working STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) students who will outshine their peers after grad school. Also the Koreans, the Japanese, and the Vietnamese students. Obviously, the Zionists (synonymous with all Jews, except the standard Trotsky wing who cling to us Jews like parasitic barnacles). Most Harvard students are focused on getting great grades and making a great life.

So who are the 30-plus hate groups? Think of the 60,000 who do not belong here, denominated two paragraphs above, as you scan the list:

African American Resistance Organization
Bengali Association of Students at Harvard College
Harvard Act on a Dream
Harvard Arab Medical and Dental Student Association
Harvard Chan Muslim Student Association
Harvard Chan Students for Health Equity and Justice in Palestine
Harvard College Pakistan Student Association
Harvard Divinity School Muslim Association
Harvard Middle Eastern and North African Law Student Association
Harvard Graduate School of Education Islamic Society
Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine
Harvard Islamic Society
Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine
Harvard Divinity School Students for Justice in Palestine
Harvard Jews for Liberation
Harvard Kennedy School Bangladesh Caucus
Harvard Kennedy School Muslim Caucus
Harvard Kennedy School Muslim Women’s Caucus
Harvard Kennedy School Palestine Caucus
Harvard Muslim Law School Association
Harvard Pakistan Forum
Harvard Prison Divest Coalition
Harvard South Asian Law Students Association
Harvard South Asians for Forward-Thinking Advocacy and Research
Harvard TPS [Temporary Protected Status] Coalition
Harvard Undergraduate Arab Women’s Collective
Harvard Undergraduate Ghungroo
Harvard Undergraduate Muslim Women’s Medical Alliance
Harvard Undergraduate Nepali Students Association
Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee
Middle East and North African Graduate School of Design Student Society
Neighbor Program Cambridge
Sikhs and Companions of Harvard Undergraduates Society of Arab Students

Three questions:

What are they doing in our country?
Who decides to let them in?
How do we get them out?

Count the number of pro-Hamas groups above with the name “Muslim” or “Arab” in it. Then “Nepali,” “Chan,” “Bangladesh,” “Bengali,” and “Pakistani.” Many of them are duplicates, overlapping paper lions. It’s like the Biden family’s interlocking corporations. Several of those groups will all share mostly the same people. It’s not 33 groups, really. And how many of them are here illegally? There you go, Occam’s razor: all explained.

Suddenly, it’s not what it seemed. It’s not 31 groups of ROTC students and business majors. Not to mention the feared “Harvard Undergraduate Ghungroo.” What is that? A game like Parcheesi or Jenga? Heck with them.

And then the “African American Resistance Organization.” Oh, how scary and intimidating! Wait till they try to get jobs with that on their résumé, and the job interviewer is a White privileged Christian woman named “Karen” or a member of my synagogue. African Americans who got DEI’d into Harvard, proclaiming themselves “The Resistance”? What a joke!

So who’s left? Yeah, they all are, but who … remains? Now that we have that handful of Saudis, Kuwaitis, and other hate-America Muslim and Arab students composing those 613 interlocking Muslim and Arab “Palestine” student groups, plus the TPS “Dreamers” (i.e., illegal immigrants), who else? The two “South Asian” groups? Guess what’s in South Asia? Yep: the same Pakistan, Nepal, Bengali/Bangladesh, and Sikh crowd. Been there, done that earlier. Thus, all the 30-plus groups basically are from a handful of hate-America Arab and Muslim countries, plus “temporary protected status” students who do not belong here in the first place, plus one Ghungroo (whatever — a new non-binary gender?), plus the de rigueur group of sicko “Jews for Liberation” who basically attack Israel to aggravate their hated parents because Mom and Dad gave them at age 13 a $100,000 bar mitzvah party with half-naked strippers, then a $250,000 Ivy education, but never spent time listening to them when they were growing up — so now they finally have their attention.

This drek permeates student bodies because universities no longer focus primarily on expanding students’ minds through encouraging inquiry and engaging in the dialectic. None of that “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” stuff. Not even teaching the logic of the Woody Allen syllogism conveyed by Boris Grushenko in Love and Death:

Socrates is a man.
All men are mortal.
[Therefore] All men are Socrates.

Instead, today’s universities are cash cows. Harvard, for example, has an endowment of $51 billion. Last year, it took in $5.8 billion. Of that, $2.6 billion was from private donations. The average tenured professor at such places makes $150,000–$200,000 a year. Harvard’s average $193,400 for full-time tenureds is comparable to Stanford’s average $206,300, and both are below MIT’s average $240,000. UC Berkeley’s average is $176,100 and University of Michigan’s $165,200. Most of these people do not earn but sure do make a lot of bucks. It is a racket in many, if not most, cases because the professors enjoy an arcane benefit: tenure — they cannot be fired, no matter how incompetent, as long as they do not physically endanger or engage in “moral turpitude.”

Under tenure, they can teach — or not teach — whatever they like. They can read Dr. Seuss rhymes or Harry Potter to their math or political science classes, presumably to convey voices of oppression. They create one-sided, loaded syllabi with reading lists chock-full of Marxist theory and anti-American, anti-White critical studies. The universities, secured by (i) their tax-exempt endowments, (ii) inflated salaries for those of their tenured professors who do not earn it, and (iii) tenure itself, devolve into dens of iniquity and sloth: moral and intellectual sloth.

https://spectator.org/arab-muslim-foreigners-and-illegals-stoke-campus-anti-semitism/

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Campus antisemitism shows it’s time to track the foreign cash flowing into US universities

It should be common sense that no one gives away $11 billion without expecting something in return. Why, then, are so few questions asked about the rivers of money flowing into American universities from foreign donors?

It has become painfully obvious what they are buying: the hearts and minds of young Americans.

The spectacle playing out on campuses today has shocked Americans of all political persuasions: antisemitic threats projected onto buildings, Jews huddled in the library to escape a mob, university administrators eager to contextualize terrorism.

This is not your garden-variety wokeism, like squabbling over pronouns or safe spaces. This is something else.

But where is it coming from? The answer can be found, as always, by following the money.

Since 1986, US universities have received at least $11 billion from Arab states, not to mention billions more from China, and they have largely hidden this funding from the public.

There is much to criticize about the university leaders who lap these funds up, but most of us had little faith in them to begin with.

More surprising is the lack of scrutiny from the US government, which is bound by law to review and assess these sources of foreign influence.

The Higher Education Act of 1965, for one, mandates that schools report twice each year any foreign gifts and contracts of $250,000 or more, yet universities mostly ignore the obligation, and the Department of Education fails to enforce it.

A new Network Contagion Research Institute report finds that at least 200 American colleges and universities illegally withheld information on approximately $13 billion in undisclosed contributions from foreign regimes, many of which are antisemitic or authoritarian.

In 2020, the Trump administration forced the DoE to investigate these funds.

The final report noted countries hostile to the United States “are targeting their investments” to “project soft power, steal sensitive and proprietary research, and spread propaganda.”

It concluded, “There is very real reason for concern that foreign money buys influence or control over teaching and research.”

Indeed, the latest research shows universities that accept money from Middle Eastern donors have, on average, 300% more antisemitic incidents than those that do not.

Whatever concern the government had about this under Donald Trump seems to have vanished under President Biden.

Yet understanding and mitigating this influence is the government’s responsibility by law and not just at the DoE.

The Department of Justice is also legally bound to “promote transparency with respect to foreign influence” on “American public opinion, policy, and laws” under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

That law requires those acting as agents of foreign entities to register publicly so the American public can properly scrutinize their words and actions.

It’s time to apply FARA to the American universities under the influence of foreign cash.

FARA dates back to 1938, when the government sought to counter Nazi propaganda.

Imagine if that propaganda had wormed its way into the minds of America’s youth, who formed the bulk of our fighting force.

It would have crippled our war effort.

Under FARA, the government required proliferators of that propaganda to register as foreign agents.

Today, universities accepting foreign funds should register too — and not just in relation to anti-Israel influence.

China is also infiltrating our top schools with the purpose of stealing technology and cutting-edge research and limiting what American students learn about the Chinese Communist Party.

The dangers are not hard to imagine. Republicans and Democrats agree that China is the greatest military threat to the United States this century.

Unlike the Chinese and the antisemites, American universities are not known for playing the long game. They’ll take the money today without asking what it means for tomorrow.

Now we are staring the consequences in the face, and they are ugly indeed.

Washington must not trust the universities to hold themselves accountable.

It should require them to report foreign funding sources and register under FARA if they are unduly influenced.

Americans have a right to know which countries are buying the next generation’s support — and which universities are selling it.

https://nypost.com/2023/11/15/opinion/campus-antisemitism-shows-its-time-to-track-the-foreign-cash-flowing-into-us-universities/

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Australia: Glib advertising no substitute for classroom reform

‘Be that teacher’ is a new $10 million advertising blitz by federal, state, and territory governments that aims to elevate the status of the teaching profession, to celebrate its impact, and to inspire more individuals to consider teaching as a fulfilling career path.

The campaign’s objectives, to reshape the public perception of teachers and to encourage aspiring educators, may well be necessary, but it will do nothing to address the reasons behind our drastic teacher shortage or stem the exodus of teachers from the profession.

To encourage new recruits, the campaign offers up the testimony of eight dedicated teachers. Their stories regarding the connections forged with students, emphasise the transformative power of a great teacher and the enduring satisfaction teachers can derive from their vocation. It’s genuinely positive and convincing stuff.

However, the campaign runs the risk of doing more harm than good. By not seeking to address the systemic problems within the education system, ‘Be that teacher’ obscures the challenges faced daily by teachers in the classroom.

Lack of ‘teacher-heart’ is not the problem in the Australian education system. The problem that demands urgent attention is what awaits a teacher in the classroom, namely, a steady decline in academic standards and a workforce in crisis. It is a crisis generated by a lack of relevant training, unsustainable workloads and unnecessary paperwork keeping teachers from their actual job. On top of this, parents with often unrealistic expectations, and unruly – sometimes violent – students exacerbate the problem.

Any campaign to attract teachers that fails to address these issues will do little to solve the teaching crisis.

Australian classrooms are one of the most problematic in the OECD. The 2018 OECD Programme for International Student Assessment results (PISA) showed while most countries registered an improvement in classroom behaviour, Australia’s had deteriorated. Australian classrooms ranked among the unruliest in the world, at 70th out of the 77 countries surveyed.

It is unsurprising that students feel empowered to antagonise and disrupt when our National Curriculum is an ideologically driven document explicitly urging students, from their earliest years, to dissent and participate in acts of civil disobedience. The idea that self-restraint and discipline are outdated vestiges of a bygone era has hardly helped.

Moreover, when a student misbehaves, the subsequent administrative demands on the teacher are daunting. The investigation and detailed documentation of the incident itself is followed by a teacher-led ‘roundtable’ discussion with those involved – employing ‘restorative practices’ – and further meetings with other staff and parents. Every one of these conversations must be documented. Hours of time, taken away from actual teaching or lesson preparation, are required every time there is an incident of almost any kind.

Many parents, too, have become increasingly and unrealistically demanding. It is not uncommon for parents to reject the school’s view of a matter and for a teacher to endure complaint, hostility and even abuse. And, of course, all the meetings arising from a complaint must be documented. Unsurprisingly, the school environment can quickly deteriorate, marked by a general lack of trust and respect.

The abandonment of the principle of ‘in loco parentis’ has led too many parents to the belief that it is their right to intervene on their child’s behalf whenever they want. This sense of parental entitlement has created a situation where 59 per cent of teachers report they spend five hours or more, every week, just dealing with parents.

Teachers are on the receiving end of a staggering and increasing rate of abuse. A study by La Trobe University’s Paulina Billett, Rochelle Fogelgarn and Edgar Burns, found that 80 per cent of surveyed teachers had experienced bullying and harassment in the preceding 9-12 month period, and more than half reported this behaviour coming from both students and parents. No other workplace would tolerate such an incidence of bullying.

Many teachers struggle to manage disruptive behaviours and maintain a conducive learning environment. The lack of adequate support and training in behaviour management perpetuates the problem, undermining the learning experience for both students and teachers. Initial teacher training, notably Woke and notoriously lacking in evidenced-based preparation for the realities of the classroom, leaves new teachers floundering and vulnerable, which in turn contributes to burnout.

The workforce shortage has also led to high numbers of teachers taking subjects they have no training in, known as ‘teaching out of field’, which is another contributing factor to the decline of educational quality and student outcomes.

The public perception of teaching being a 9am-3.30pm job with long holidays, if it was ever true, has never been further from the truth. The profession is under extreme strain, with teachers routinely describing their workload as ‘excessive’, ‘unrealistic’, and ‘unsustainable’. A recent Monash University survey suggests almost half of the teaching workforce is considering leaving the profession.

While the “Be that teacher” campaign celebrates exceptional educators, the $10 million spent will in no way address the real problems underlying the teacher shortage, and will only overshadow the pressing need for sweeping system reform.

For the teaching profession to be genuinely elevated and, crucially, for workplace conditions to improve, comprehensive reform is urgently required

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/glib-advertising-will-not-enable-that-teacher/

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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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Iowa Leads Way on Education Freedom

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, families bear the twin burdens of inflation and indoctrination.

Parents continue to witness their children being taught divisive, radical ideologies that portray their country as intrinsically racist, place social justice above fundamental subjects such as reading and math, and even divide children by race. All this while academic proficiency drops off a cliff.

The soaring costs of living make alternatives such as private school or homeschooling increasingly unattainable for middle- and working-class families. But now, after a decade of battling the failing public education system, parents finally have a reason to hope.

Just two years ago, not a single state had universal school choice. Today, nine do.

To understand how groundbreaking this education renaissance is, just look at the state of Iowa.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, began 2023 by signing into law the Students First Act. This measure allows all Iowa families to receive funds in an education savings account, or ESA, to attend the school of their choice.

By the 2025-26 school year, every single child in Iowa will have access to an ESA to craft a learning option that works for them. It’s not just a discount—this year, the ESA amount is approximately $7,500 per child, which covers the entirety of private tuition for most elementary school students in the state.

Any leftover funds may be used to pay for other education-related services and products, such as tutors and textbooks. This marks a much-needed reprieve for parents who have watched their children struggle within an outdated system that lacks accountability and flexibility.

Iowa’s law is the nation’s third universal education choice program, following closely behind West Virginia and Arizona’s ESA expansions in 2022. Six other states have since adopted similar—and, in some cases, more expansive—policies this year: Utah, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina.

But Reynolds didn’t stop at school choice, either. She also signed into law a commonsense parental rights bill, SF 496, which prohibits instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools in grades K-6 and forbids school libraries from stocking sexually explicit materials. The law also requires libraries to post their card catalogs online for the sake of transparency.

Critically, the Iowa law incorporated components of the Given Name Act, prohibiting schools from hiding information from parents about a child going by a different name or pronoun at school.

In a separate measure, the governor signed into law a bill that provides flexibility to traditional public schools, removing some regulations pertaining to teacher and librarian hiring and burdensome reporting requirements to the state.

For making these groundbreaking reforms, the Hawkeye State won The Heritage Foundation’s 2023 Education Freedom Award. Due to the new laws pertaining to transparency, teacher freedom, and school choice, Iowa jumped an impressive 13 spots on Heritage’s Education Freedom Report Card relative to the state’s 2022 standing—the largest improvement of any state in the country. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news and commentary outlet.)

Florida retained its first-place position, and Arizona stood strong in second place, thanks in large part to the options for universal education savings accounts in both states.

Rounding out Heritage’s top five states for education freedom were Utah, Arkansas, and Indiana, all of which contain universal or near-universal school choice for families.

On the flip side, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Oregon rounded out the worst-performing five states in Heritage’s ranking.

More states, including Texas, are recognizing the pivotal role played by school choice in maximizing academic transparency and accountability. Reynolds is among those leaders who recognize that these reforms go hand-in-glove.

Transparency and parental involvement in a child’s education are vital, but without meaningful choices, they lack teeth. The ultimate accountability lies in the power of families to direct their child’s education if their current, government-assigned school fails to meet their needs.

Parents should be in the driver’s seat of their children’s education. Yet right now, too many families are confined to a system that doesn’t align with their values or the specific needs of their children.

Iowa is among those states that are breaking away from the monopoly enjoyed by the education establishment. And Iowa’s road map is now available for more states to follow.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/11/13/iowa-leads-way-on-education-freedom

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MIT Has a Pro-Hamas, Anti-Semitic Problem

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has a student body that is one-third foreign nationals. They flock to MIT for the reputedly excellent math and engineering programs. However, an inexcusable clash started by pro-Palestinian (read: pro-Hamas and anti-Semitic) protesters, who physically prevented Jewish students from getting to class, turned more volatile with the arrival of counterprotesters. The administration feared that violence would erupt, and so it gave all the students a choice: Leave now or get suspended.

Many student did comply. Those who did not participated in "talks" with the admin and staff. After threats of suspension were made and the students didn't obey, one would think that punishment would be carried out immediately.

Not so.

MIT President Sally Kornbluth later wrote an explanation: "Members of my team have been in dialogue with students all day. Because we later heard serious concerns about collateral consequences for the students, such as visa issues, we have decided, as an interim action, that the students who remained after the deadline will be suspended from non-academic campus activities. The students will remain enrolled at MIT and will be able to attend academic classes and labs."

In other words, because these students would lose their visa and be deported, MIT lessened the punishment and allowed them to continue to go to classes with the Jewish students against whom they hold such animus.

This is what has been allowed to continue in MIT classrooms because these "protesters" weren't punished. It's been a week since the initial volatile protest, and they are using their privilege of still being allowed to attend classes to interrupt students trying to learn and teachers trying to teach. There are no real consequences because MIT is afraid the malcontents will be deported. The exasperated expressions on the students' faces in the linked video says it all.

It prompts the question: Just how many of these anti-Semitic protesters are foreign nationals? If one were to judge by Kornbluth's decision, the answer must be many or most.

If that's the case, then MIT really is failing its student population in extraordinary ways. Foreign nationals are not American citizens; they have to abide by the same rules as all the other students. If they cannot abide by those rules, they should not attend school in the U.S. MIT has let these dangerous and threatening students reign as the cry-bullies they are, and the tiny Jewish population (and those other students who are just there to learn) are subject to the tyranny and whims of these anti-Semites and the apathy of their administration. It is shameful.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/102122-mit-has-a-pro-hamas-anti-semitic-problem-2023-11-14

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Moms for Liberty Co-Founder Has a Message for Teacher’s Union Boss Mocking Parental Rights

Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice laid out her strategy for the “David and Goliath” struggle to win school board elections in the face of the teachers unions’ stranglehold, following another historic election cycle in which the 3-year-old organization racked up 50 wins, but fell short in many other races.

“We got 50 people elected to school board [seats last] Tuesday, which is really exciting,” Justice told “The Daily Signal Podcast” in an interview Thursday.

While some news outlets focused on the many races in which Moms for Liberty-endorsed candidates lost, Justice emphasized the wins, putting them in context.

“Moms for Liberty didn’t exist three years ago,” she noted. “For us to have now been able to elect in 2022 and 2023 365 school board members who are liberty-minded individuals standing up for parental rights, putting the focus back on the basics in American public education, stopping this woke indoctrination that we’ve been seeing—it’s very exciting.”

Justice pushed back against criticism from American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, who mocked Moms for Liberty’s supposed failures.

“My answer back is those are 50 seats that we wouldn’t have won if we didn’t exist, and that Randi should hold my beer, because we’re just getting started,” she said.

The Moms for Liberty co-founder noted that 83% of the school board candidates her organization endorsed had not previously run for office.

She also mentioned the money. “The teachers unions spend a lot of money in school board races,” she said. Since 2023 was an off-year election, the races were “about local politics, local elections, and teachers unions have really run the game on these elections for a very, very long time.”

“It is a bit of a David-and-Goliath moment in American politics, but we’re really excited because we’re getting the word out,” Justice said.

She laid out her takeaways from the election, a game plan to win even more seats going forward.

“The takeaways are: Let’s teach people how to run campaigns, how to run for office, how to help their friends run for office, but also, financially, we need to be able to support these races,” the Moms for Liberty co-founder said. She mentioned her organization’s political action committee and super PAC.

“In Florida in 2022, when we were able to put just a little bit of money into the races, I think we spent about $50,000 through a political committee in Florida in 2022,” she said. “Our success rate was 80%. So, it’s really a learning moment for us in 2023, and we’re excited for 2023.”

Justice emphasized the resilience of her local Moms for Liberty leaders. She recalled one chapter leader in whose county every Moms for Liberty-endorsed candidate lost, but who decided she wasn’t going to give up.

“That’s the message of Moms for Liberty: We’re just getting started,” she said. “Of course, we’d like to win all the races, but 50 seats on a school board in a single day is nothing to turn your nose up at.”

She emphasized the importance of keeping a “joyful warrior spirit because our kids are watching us.”

“Am I going to be angry and frustrated and give up, or am I going to model perseverance and be relentless in the pursuit of defending America and our children?” she asked.

Justice also addressed Moms for Liberty’s key parental rights issues, noting that the COVID-19 pandemic gave parents the ability “to see behind the education curtain.” Parents raised concerns about falling education standards, top-down pandemic requirements, and what she called “indoctrination.”

“They came to the school districts and the school boards. They were shut down,” she recalled. “The idea that people within the community couldn’t go and have their voices heard in front of elected officials” was infuriating.

Justice raised the alarm about Marxist critical theory—which analyzes society along oppressor-oppressed lines—being “laced into every element in our children’s day.” She also lamented that reading standards have fallen drastically.

“There is no future for America with an illiterate society,” she said.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/11/14/david-goliath-moms-liberty-co-founder-lays-battle-plan-school-boards-election-results

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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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New York considers ditching Regents exams as HS graduation requirement

A cheaters' charter

New York State education bosses are considering ditching the Regents exam as a graduation requirement for high school students, leading to some education advocates accusing them of dumbing down standards.

The New York State Education Department on Monday presented the Board of Regents with the recommendations on graduation measures — which included giving students the option of taking the Regents exam to graduate.

Mona Davids of the NYC Parents Union said moving away from the Regents exam requirements to earn a diploma signifies an insulting lack of faith in the abilities of students of color.

“This is a continuation of the soft bigotry of low expectations from our black and Hispanic students,” said Davids, who was part of a 2014 lawsuit challenging New York’s tenure laws that shield ineffective teachers from losing their jobs.

“They don’t think our kids are smart enough to pass the Regents exams. They’re lowering the bar. It is racist to look down on our kids.

“It’s dodging accountability for educating our students. They don’t think our students are educable.”

A state education policy veteran, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Post that New York was heading in the wrong direction, away from accountability for whether poor and mostly minority students are learning.

“How are we going to monitor success? How are parents going to know if students are learning if we move away from exams? This is going in the exact opposite direction,” said the source.

If implemented, the move would mark a significant shift in state education policy, which has required high schoolers to take and pass the Regents exams before earning their diplomas for more than a century.

“We must remove barriers and facilitate equitable access to education by addressing the individual needs of students, increasing opportunities for work-based learning or college readiness programs, and providing students with practical skills and experiences that enhance their employability and post-secondary education opportunities.”

Under the commission’s proposed roadmap, students would still have the option of taking the Regents exam to graduate, but they could also be allowed to demonstrate their proficiency in different ways, such as various forms of “performance-based” assessments, like essay writing or developing portfolios of their work.

These assessments would be developed in partnership with teachers and ultimately approved by the state before implementation.

https://nypost.com/2023/11/13/metro/new-york-might-be-moving-away-from-regents-exams-as-hs-graduation-requirement/

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Globalists Panic As Homeschooling Explodes Across US

Globalist spokesmen in media and government are voicing concern over a huge boom in homeschooling across the USA that has the trend becoming more mainstream

An analysis from the Washington Post last week found that the number of homeschooled children in the US has jumped from 1.5 million in 2019 to as many as 2.7 million this year — some estimates say 3.7 million — suggesting that many children did not return to schools when they reopened during the pandemic.

The analysis — which looked at 60 percent of the school-aged population in 7,000 school districts across 32 states and Washington, D.C. — found that homeschooling defies political, geographical and economic borders.

For example, while Republican Florida has the largest homeschool population with 154,000 homeschooled children, Democratic New York is showing the fastest growth with nearly 52,000 children homeschooled, more than double since 2017.

New York City boroughs Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx saw the highest growth rates with the homeschool population in some districts surging over 300 percent in the last six years.

The trend is also gaining popularity even in areas with high academic achievement. Last year over 60,000 children were homeschooled in districts which ranked in the country’s top fifth for scholastic aptitude.

Florida’s Hillsborough County has become the nation’s homeschool “capital” with 10,680 homeschoolers in the district.

“Today, Hillsborough home-schoolers inhabit a scholastic and extracurricular ecosystem that is in many ways indistinguishable from that of a public or private school,” reports the Washington Post. “Home-schooled kids play competitive sports. They put on full-scale productions of ‘Mary Poppins’ and ‘Les Miserables.’ They have high school graduation ceremonies, as well as a prom and homecoming dance.”

But Hillsborough officials are displeased with the trend.

“It’s a tremendous imbalance,” said Hillsborough County School Board member Lynn Gray, who says she worries about homeschoolers’ “academic preparation and lack of exposure to diverse points of view.”

“I can tell you right now: Many of these parents don’t have any understanding of education,” she said. “The price will be very big to us, and to society. But that won’t show up for a few years.”

But studies show that homeschoolers outperform their state-educated counterparts in nearly all areas. Standardized tests reveal that homeschoolers on average score over 30 percentage points higher than public schoolers in core studies such as reading, language and math.

SAT test results show that homeschooled children score higher than state-educated children by as many as 70 points in critical reading and 48 points in writing. They are also more likely to achieve higher GPAs.

Minority children who attend homeschool also show higher results than their counterparts. Black homeschooled students, for example, have been shown to outscore Black public schooled students by 23–42 percentage points.

According to government figures, 41 percent of homeschoolers are Black, Asian, Hispanic, and others (i.e. not White/non-Hispanic).

Most homeschoolers also report being excited about life and satisfied with their work, joined by a minority of public schoolers.

As school districts lose students to the homeschool method, governments and teachers’ unions are looking for ways to show more impressive numbers and boost enrollment.

The Oregon State Board of Education, for example, has dropped essential skills and standardized testing requirements, which it said was necessary to fight racism. This decision was ardently backed by the Oregon Education Association, the state’s 40,000-strong teachers’ union, which stands to lose members if graduation and enrollment rates falter.

Following the decision, Oregon public high schools boasted an 81.3 percent graduation rate last year despite only 43 percent of students being proficient in English and less than 31 percent being proficient in math.

The picture is bleaker in Baltimore where standardized test scores for 2021 revealed that 85 percent of students are not proficient in math and four out of ten public high school students earn lower than a 1.0 GPA.

At one public high school, students were found to read at an elementary school or kindergarten level.

But higher academic achievement among homeschoolers — including minority children — has not stopped media operatives from painting homeschool as a racist initiative.

“It may seem harmless, but the insidious racism of the American religious right’s obsession with homeschooling speaks volumes, writes @AntheaButler,” MSNBC tweeted.

Last month comedian John Oliver dedicated a segment on Last Week Tonight to slamming homeschools. Without data to show that homeschooled children are disadvantaged, Oliver argued that homeschools should be regulated by the state to ensure that homeschooling parents are “moral” and “safe” for their children.

Oliver is joined by other media figures in his opposition to homeschooling.

“Imagine putting ‘homeschool mom’ in your bio and not understanding you’ve just ruined the lives of five innocent children,” tweeted MSNBC host Joe Scarborough last year.

https://principia-scientific.com/globalists-panic-as-homeschooling-explodes-across-us/

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Primary school pupils are told to 'read woke' and study books that claim white people began racism

Schoolchildren have been encouraged to 'read woke' and study books that claim white people invented racism, it has been revealed.

Titled 'Read Woke', the project has supplied books to primary schools which claim racism was invented by white people.

It is part of a literacy project funded by a Scottish government grant that has been piloted to help 'enlighten' pupils on racial issues.

The programme includes a volume that asserts that it is impossible to be racist against white people, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, founder of the campaign group Don't Divide Us, urged schools to bin the material.

She told the paper: 'This initiative is normalising politically radical and partisan beliefs. It will do nothing to help teachers teach pupils how to read, and has little to do with education more generally.

'Our advice to schools is to either put the books in the recycling bin, or keep them for the next CPD and invite speakers from Read Woke and Don't Divide Us to discuss why this is/is not suitable curriculum content.'

The Read Woke website for South Ayrshire says the initiative 'will awaken our students to a range of important issues, enlighten them, and encourage them to think critically and with empathy when forming opinions'.

Piloted in 2021, the project was adopted from the idea of Cicely Lewis, a US librarian, and is said to have been supported by funding from Scotland's School Library Improvement Fund.

A book on the reading list for secondary pupils titled 'This Book is Anti-Racist' tells youngsters that 'being racist against white people is not a thing'.

It also offers advice on how to raise concerns about 'the dominant culture of white supremacy' in the classroom.

Elsewhere, the book My Skin Your Skin by Laura Henry-Allain also features on the primary reading list devised by the project.

It tells children that 'racism started a long time ago when white people wanted to have more control over people who were not white.'

And that 'an example of racism is when white people think they are better than people from other races.'

South Ayrshire Council was contacted for comment.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12741579/Primary-school-pupils-told-read-woke-study-books-claim-white-people-began-racism.html

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http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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‘Woke’ Elementary School Reportedly Cancels Veterans Day Assembly

A school in Redmond, Washington reportedly replaced its annual assembly to commemorate Veterans Day with a “Peace Assembly,” according to a report from Seattle outlet KTTH.

Reportedly, Benjamin Rush Elementary in the Lake Washington School District holds a Veterans Day assembly every year. But, this year, the school’s administration decided to recognized the “International Day of Tolerance” instead (via KTTH):

Families did not have much time to learn about the change, which was jarring to those who expected a Veterans Day assembly. The “Peace Assembly” appeared in the school’s newsletter on October 29 and November 5, but it did not explain what it was.

“I was extremely disappointed and yet not surprised,” one Benjamin Rush Elementary father told The Jason Rantz Show on KTTH. He asked for anonymity to prevent reprisals for speaking up. “For years the Veterans Assembly has been a highlight at the school and one of the few midday assemblies that gathers a fairly large audience of parents to come hear the speakers.”

The school ditched the patriotic songs for those centered around the assembly’s theme of Tolerance, Acceptance and Kindness. Some of the songs to be performed are “Live in Peace,” “Peacebuilder Pledge Song,” “Amani Utupe Na Ustawi” and “Namaste.”

“Students will spend most of the assembly singing songs, with each grade level performing two songs that they learned while attending music classes at the school,” a district spokesperson said of the Peace Assembly in a statement to The Jason Rantz Show on KTTH.

To the father who reached out to The Jason Rantz Show on KTTH, this seems like a slight of veterans who fought those who threatened peace.

The father who spoke to KTTH host Jason Rantz explained that in recent years, the school administration has “moved strongly away from pride in our traditions and American history.” He added that “we should be taking the time to show our children and our community that we have brave men and women who are willing to stand up and fight for our freedom and the peace that other places in the world can only dream of.”

At least ten other schools will host their annual Veterans Day assembly. Reportedly, Benjamin Rush Elementary is the only one breaking from the tradition.

“I remember three years ago, sitting next to a parent who had recently moved to America from Germany,” the father explained. “She was sitting there with tears in her eyes. Afterward, she explained to me that she was blown away with the patriotism and American pride.”

The father added that that kind of experience “will now be missed.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/11/11/school-cancelled-veterans-day-assembly-and-replaced-with-a-peace-assembly-n2631027

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Rabbis at woke colleges describe ‘unnerving’ antisemitism as campuses become hotbeds of hate

Thousands of rabbis gathered Sunday in Brooklyn for its famous annual Chabad event — including hundreds on the front lines at some of the wokest, rabidly antisemitic campuses in the nation.

Several rabbis who attended the photogenic event in Crown Heights and helm Jewish centers at liberal US colleges described to The Post how their campuses have been transformed into dangerous hotbeds of hate since the Hamas slaughter in Israel on Oct. 7.

“It’s been disturbing, unnerving — it’s been a shock to students to see that kind of immediate chutzpah, where the demonstrators came out even before the blood dried up, to shout with such audacity on the campus with no qualifications at all,’’ said Rabbi Levi Haskelevich, the Chabad rabbi at the University of Pennsylvania for the past 23 years, referring to protesters supporting the Palestinian cause.

Haskelvich was recently recorded in a viral video helping a student put on tefillin, or leather straps containing sections of the Torah for praying, while a group of pro-Palestinian students marched past shouting “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea.”
rabbis

“We have students who are into their PhDs who said from the moment of the attacks they could not find a safe place on campus,” he said.

In the five weeks since Israel was rocked by the surprise terror attack, some US campuses have been flooded with violent pro-Hamas rallies and horrifying assaults on Jewish students.

Prestigious institutions including New York and Columbia universities in the Big Apple have roundly received failing grades for their responses to the recent spate of antisemitism.

But as hate swirls around them, many Jewish American students have seemed to regain a sense of pride in their religion and background, the rabbis said.

The rabbis said there has been a lot of “chaos” on campuses as clashes between students over the Israel-Hamas war worsen.

Rabbi Shmuly Weiss, who has been Chabad rabbi at McGill University in Montreal since 2007, said that after receiving a donation of 100 Star of David necklaces, students who had never worn one quickly opted to put one on.

“It’s not just about Israel — they’re stepping up and saying, ‘You know what? I’m going to be a proud Jew.’ Students are scared, but they’re embracing this tense situation that we’re in. They’re very, very proud of their Judaism,’’ Weiss said.

Still, Chabad Rabbi Shlomo Elkan at Oberlin College in Ohio said some students there were so scared after Oct. 7 that they urged him to cancel the campus’s Chanukah menorah lighting ceremony.

The students feared the ceremony would be read as “too pro-Israel” from the school, he said.

To try to ease tensions, there have been conversations on campus involving both Jewish leaders and the student head of the Muslim Student Association, Elkan said.

“We had a meeting last week with [the] Students for Palestine [group] talking about these issues in an effort to bring the temperature down,’’ the rabbi said. “It was a small crowd, 20-something people, but that’s where change really starts.’’

Rabbi Meir Chaim Posner, who has been Chabad rabbi at Yale University for the past eight years, said he has noticed a rise in the “quiet insidious stuff” such as discrimination and singling Jewish students out on campus.

“Many, many students have close friends that suddenly don’t understand or don’t appreciate or don’t affirm what they’re going through in terms of their sense of mourning, in terms of their sense of pain,” Posner said, referring to the aftermath of Oct. 7.

“And then in the weeks after, they’ll find a close friend who is actively supporting Hamas,” the rabbi said

https://nypost.com/2023/11/12/news/rabbis-on-front-lines-at-woke-antisemitic-us-colleges-describe-campus-hotbeds-of-hate/

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Congress is planning to turn up the heat on major universities about their funding

Republicans in Congress are planning to turn up the heat on major universities to fully disclose how they receive billions of dollars from shady foreign sources, and explain whether these countries are looking to influence the American college experience with a hefty dose of leftist and anti-Israel propaganda, The Post has learned.

The expected move follows a bombshell report released this past week that shows billions of dollars “from foreign governments, many of which are authoritarian,” including those in the Middle East, are sloshing around the budgets of our elite schools.

The report stated there is a correlation between where the money was spent and campus antisemitic activity.

According to my sources on Capitol Hill, GOP lawmakers also believe these foreign donations are at the heart of the increasingly radical pedagogy at those hallowed universities — a contributing factor in the disgusting displays by student groups at these schools celebrating the brutal Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks against Jews near Gaza.

Why foreign countries like Qatar, China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates care so much about American higher education is an obvious question. One answer: Plenty of students from those countries attended American universities.

Yet it doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to imagine that places like Qatar and China, in particular, would like to use the college classroom to advance their strategic interests, which don’t really align with our own.

Qatar, for instance, is nominally a US ally, but it also is the home of Hamas’ leadership.

China is, well, China, and that has plenty of GOP lawmakers worried that both countries are using their clout with elite colleges for nefarious means.

“Congress will be putting pressure on universities to show how much money is coming from these types of sources,” said one Wall Street executive involved in the matter.

The House recently advanced legislation for heightened disclosure on foreign contributions to American universities; hearings are a possibility.

What are they getting?

“Lawmakers also want to know what the countries are getting in return for their investment,” the executive added.

The exec says many in Congress believe the universities taking this foreign cash may also be skirting the law.

Colleges are required to disclose the sources of donations that hit $250,000 or more cumulatively.

Yet many don’t, he says, at least not on a timely basis.

Moreover, colleges often don’t provide full information on the donor identities.

The report from the Network Contagion Research Institute on foreign cash flowing to US campuses found that, from 2015 to 2020, “institutions that accepted money from Middle Eastern donors, had, on average, 300% more antisemitic incidents than those institutions that did not.”

It’s not surprising that UPenn — the source of massive antisemitic protests following Oct. 7 — is high on the list of receiving funds from these suspicious sources, but it wasn’t alone.

According to the report: “Eight Ivy League schools were disproportionately represented in the highest-funded institutions from what it called “undocumented” origins.

Among those, “Cornell (2nd) and Harvard (3rd), Yale (6th), Stanford (14th), Columbia (16th) and the University of Pennsylvania (18th) — placed in the top twenty overall.”

Does that funding lead to weaponizing the academic experience to produce antisemitic monsters?

Paul Kamenar, an attorney for the National Legal and Policy Center, lays out a case that it does. “The money comes into the schools funding professors and their programs that are left-wing as hell,” he tells me. “Schools get various grants to teach students from a leftist perspective.”

Following the money trail should turn up some interesting results.

Back in 2020, Kamenar’s organization did an amazing deep dive into the funding of a think-tank known as the Penn Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

A “think tank” named after Sleepy Joe Biden is almost comical; what isn’t funny is UPenn’s curious funding source after the center was created: Communist China, the same country that quashes dissent of all kinds, engages in religious persecution and has imperialistic ambitions.

Coincidence? Maybe, but Kamenar says his group’s investigation found some disturbing coincidences.

As millions of dollars of Chinese money flowed to UPenn, Penn Biden began inviting Chinese government officials as speakers to its conferences.

One conference during the early days of COVID glossed over China’s role in the spread and likely creation of the deadly virus that led to a worldwide pandemic, instead bizarrely focusing on Hungary’s allegedly xenophobic reaction to it by restricting Chinese nationals from coming into the country.

Leftism in the guise of academic freedom has been a problem for some time, of course.

For years, universities have degraded courses in Western Civilization, branding them remnants of an educational system run by dead (and racist) white men.

They were replaced by increasingly woke core requirements.

Syracuse University is typical of the radicalizing of the college learning experience.

Its so-called “course requirement” for undergraduate students includes classes in “Magic and Religion,” “Gender in a Globalizing World” and “Popular Culture in the Middle East.”
What do you think? Post a comment.

Try not to laugh when you discuss that course load, but there’s an Orwellian quality to what’s being passed off as an academic experience these days.

Those soft subjects also include brainwashing in leftist, anti-American and anti-Israel dogma, critics say.

https://nypost.com/2023/11/11/business/congress-is-planning-to-turn-up-the-heat-on-major-universities-about-their-funding/

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My other blogs: Main ones below

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'If the KKK Were Doing This...' Nikki Haley Exposes Key Point About Campus Responses to Anti-Semitism

During Wednesday night's third RNC debate, this one held in Miami, candidates were asked about how to address anti-semitism after the October 7 terrorist attack that Hamas perpetrated on Israel, specifically anti-semitism on college campuses. This was to be expected, not merely because of the current events going on, but because the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) was co-hosting the debate.

"Jewish students across the country are threatened and under attack," Matt Brooks, the CEO of RJC pointed out. "What do you say to Jewish students on college campuses who feel unsafe given the dramatic rise in antisemitism? And what do you to say to university presidents and college presidents who have not met the moral clarity moment to forcefully condemn Hamas terrorism?"

When it was former Ambassador Nikki Haley's turn to speak, with co-moderator Lester Holt asking her "what do you say to Americans who are simply afraid right now in this current environment that we’re talking about," she made a telling point about how college campuses have reacted.

Haley said the situation means "the country is all out of sorts," going on to share it made her "so angry," as she listed out examples of anti-semitism students have faced, including at Cooper Union where Jewish students were "barricaded in the library" and another student. threatened to "shoot up the kosher dining hall," as was the case at Cornell University.

She also had a message for those college presidents who have been so to action. "And this is what I would say about our college presidents is if the KKK were doing this, every college president would be up in arms," Haley declared. "This is no different. You should treat it exactly the same. Anti-semitism is just as awful as racism and we’ve got to make sure they’re protected."

Colleges have been so quick to condemn racism and other forms of hatred against students part of other communities. This even includes protecting students from conservative student groups, as was highlighted during a House Judiciary Hearing on Wednesday.

The responses from supposed elite institutions when their students have been faced with anti-semitim, however, such as Harvard and Columbia, have been shameful. When students who had signed onto Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) statements blaming Israel for the October 7 attack had been identified, those schools rushed to protect the identified students. Alumni and donors have thus pulled support from these and other institutions not doing enough to protect Jewish students.

Haley had a message for these protesters, too, including when it comes to what Hamas terrorists support. "And for everybody that’s protesting on these college campuses in favor of Hamas, let me remind you something. Hamas said, 'Death to Israel and death to America.' They hate and would kill you too," she reminded.

"And the idea that they’re talking about genocide for the Jewish people, that’s not the values of America. That’s not us. We’re better than that. We don’t need to celebrate terrorists, we don’t need to celebrate genocide. We don’t need to celebrate violence towards anybody. We need to go back and soul search in our country and remember what we are about and we are about taking care of people, not going and making them live in fear because some other terrorist activity says they want to destroy them," she said in her message to Americans.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2023/11/09/if-the-kkk-were-doing-this-nikki-haley-exposes-key-point-about-campus-responses-to-anti-semitism-n2631030

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Donors’ Power of Purse Sends Loud Rebuke to Colleges’ Shameful Silence on Pro-Hamas Protests

Students from across the U.S. and Europe have taken to the streets to defend the indefensible or “contextualize” that which no context can justify; that is, mass killings and gang rape in the Holy Land on Oct. 7. Many of their elders now wonder how kids they raised to be civilized seem to be stumped by how to react to such barbarism.

Society will need to answer that question, but even before that, some people with the power of the purse and the power of the law are doing something to correct the moral confusion that has gripped universities in the aftermath of Hamas’ horrendous massacre of Jews.

In the U.S., billionaire alumni are withholding donations from elite schools. Some politicians, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have also tried to establish some order in state universities.

The donors have attracted the most attention, because cutting off money will hurt the universities. Elite Ivy League colleges—such as Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown, etc.—have endowments in the billions of dollars, so the departure of a few donors will hurt them less than state colleges.

But most of the attention during these crises is often shed on the Ivies, and they have been among the worst equivocators in a time that calls for moral clarity. It’s also unknown whether there will be a cascade effect, with smaller donors now reconsidering their contributions.

It’s fun to wear the sweat pants with your school’s logo and put its decal on the back of your car, but many will draw a line at antisemitism and mass rape.

Plus, the donors have published their letters, embarrassing university leadership. Among the best has to be the one that billionaire David Magerman sent to the University of Pennsylvania because of the tepid response to the crisis by the university’s president, Liz Magill.

“Over the past month, I have been deeply embarrassed by my association with and support for the University of Pennsylvania,” Magerman wrote in the letter on Oct. 15, adding:

The leadership of the university has failed to demonstrate the values I expect from an institution that purports to educate young adults and prepare them for a lifetime of leadership and to be emissaries for good in the world.

Magerman noted that Marc Rowan, another billionaire donor to Penn, “has called for your firing as a response to your failures in leadership, but I feel your firing is unnecessary, because it is wholly inadequate.”

If in fact the University of Pennsylvania as an institution has such a misguided moral compass that it can fail to recognize evil when it is staring us all in the face, I don’t think replacing you will accomplish anything. Frankly, I don’t think there is anything anyone can do to redeem the school, short of rebuilding its moral foundations from the ground up.

That last line captured how many Americans, not just those in the donor class, are reacting to the moral confusion coming from campuses following the Hamas massacre. Something must be done to the universities to rebuild them as moral centers that will engage in truth-discovery and instruct future generations on what’s best in our societies. Right now, to many, it is clear that universities have become the opposite; namely, places where a Marxist professoriate indoctrinates young minds.

One politician who has tried to do something is DeSantis, who has instructed the chancellor of the Florida university system, Ray Rodrigues, to deactivate the pro-Palestinian group National Students for Justice in Palestine, which has organized the most antisemitic demonstrations in U.S. campuses following the massacre.

Aiding DeSantis in this effort is a Students for Justice in Palestine toolkit that defends the Hamas atrocity, billing it as “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.” It also says that “We as Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.” Seizing on the appearance of that statement as a declaration that Students for Justice in Palestine does not only support the terrorists, but are in fact part of them, DeSantis nudged Rodrigues to disband the group’s chapters at Florida universities.

In Europe, whose universities rely less on individual donors and where there is less federalism within countries (the European Union’s growth has been such that government by nation-states is now called federalism, but this is problem to be tackled another day), it has been the national governments and cities that have taken the lead.

Thus, in France, President Emmanuel Macron on Oct. 12 had his interior minister ban all pro-Palestinian demonstrations, in order to contain the growth of antisemitic acts. Just as French police started using tear gas to dispel pro-Hamas demonstrations, Macron went on television and said, “Let us not bring ideological adventures here [to France] by imitation or by projection. Let us not add national fractures … to international fractures. Let us stay united.”

And the government of the German capital, Berlin, is strictly enforcing a ban on pro-Hamas demonstrations in a bid to avoid the scenes of tens of thousands of protesters defending terrorists in British cities.

These actions by donors, governors, presidents, and mayors are welcome, but as necessary as they are, they’re treating symptoms, not curing the disease. After calm returns, society will have to ask itself, what have we allowed to happen among the young and the immigrant populations?

Great care was taken in decades gone by to instill in them national values. Now we see what happens when we cease doing that.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/11/06/american-universities-the-face-of-hamas-terrorist-attacks

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2 LA charter school teachers removed for teaching 1st graders about ‘genocide in Palestine’ in class at synagogue

Two teachers have been removed from a Los Angeles area charter school located at a synagogue after teaching a lesson to first graders about “genocide in Palestine,” according to school officials.

The teachers were ousted from the classroom — but not fired — from the Citizens of the World Charter School, which has classrooms at Adat Ari El Synagogue in the San Fernando Valley, KTLA reported.

Senior Rabbi Brian Schuldenfrei told reporters at a press conference on Friday that tensions at the school first emerged after “certain teachers” reached out to the school’s principal about Israeli flags hoisted around campus following Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel.

“I know that this is a time to hold your community close, and perhaps the flags are intended for that – but do you know how long they will be up?” the principal, Hye-Won Gehring, emailed Schuldenrei after the teachers asked when they would be removed.

Schuldenfrei said he found the email offensive and likened it to asking Americans to take down American flags after the September 11th terrorist attacks. Gehring later apologized, he said.

He later learned that the same teachers who complained about the flags had taught a “human rights” lesson to first graders at the school — and posted about it online.

“After the lesson, one of the teachers proudly shared on Instagram, and I quote, ‘LOL but I did a lesson on the genocide in Palestine today w my first graders…,’” Schuldenfrie said. “The teacher went on to boast: ‘My fav was a kid who was like ‘What if they just gave the land back to Palestine and find somewhere else to live.”

The teacher added a heart emoji to the end of the post, he added.

“The world needs to know that anyone who calls for the eradication of Israel is expressing a pernicious form of antisemitism, a denial of the right of Jews to live in our ancestral homeland,” Schuldenfrie continued. “The heart emoji … is perverse punctuation, dressing up hate in the guise of love.”

CWC executive director Melissa Kaplan apologized and vowed that the school would fully investigate the incident.

“CWC unequivocally condemns the social media posts by our staff members, including the use of the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s [response to the attack],” Kaplan said in a statement. “CWC unequivocally condemns the disturbing suggestion that Jews should leave the region, and we unequivocally condemn any lesson that creates bias or fear among our students.”

https://nypost.com/2023/11/11/news/2-la-charter-school-teachers-removed-for-teaching-1st-graders-about-genocide-in-palestine/

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