Democrat Rep. Ritchie Torres urges DOE to prohibit ‘indoctrinating students with anti-Israel propaganda’ after classroom map left out Jewish state

A Democratic Congressman is urging the Department of Education to put restrictions in place to prevent “anti-Israel propaganda” in city schools after a Qatari-funded map that left out the Jewish state was found posted in a Brooklyn classroom.

Rep. Ritchie Torres called the use of the map “irresponsible, reckless and dangerous,” especially given the current political climate following the horrific October 7 attacks by Hamas, according to a copy of the letter to the Department of Education obtained by the Post.

“Anti-Israel propaganda has no place in the NYC public school system, which should be free of politics,” Torres said in the letter to Chancellor David Banks on Friday.

“I am calling upon the DOE to put in place policies and protocols that prohibit DOE officials from indoctrinating students with anti-Israel propaganda.

“The DOE should subject to heightened scrutiny educational content from external entities like the Qatar International Foundation, whose program promoted the image of the Middle East where Israel was nowhere to be found.”

The Israel-erasing map was used as part of a program funded by the Qatar Foundation International (QFI), the American wing of the Qatar Foundation, a non-profit owned by the ruling family of the wealthy Arab state.

Since the revelation of the map, the Department of Education has been scurrying to come up with answers, as educators and local politicians expressed disbelief that the display was being used in a public classroom.

“I am deeply concerned about this issue and we are working to determine why this map is on display,” Rep. Dan Goldman, whose district includes the school, said earlier in the week.

The map, which was exposed in an article by The Free Press Thursday, was manufactured by Arab education company Ruman and features Islamic landmarks in each of the countries in northern Africa and the Middle East.

Photos show the map was posted under the heading “Arab World” with hand-drawn labels marking each country, except for Israel which was labeled “Palestine,” at PS 261. The omission was denounced as anti-Israel propaganda that sought to delegitimize the Jewish state.

Twenty-two K-12 public schools and eight academic programs are known to have received grants from QFI across the United States. The Post has reached out to these institutes to see if they are still funded.

The Department of Education has ignored requests from the Post about QFI funding and when initially questioned about the map’s existence failed to see the problem, telling the Free Press it was “referring to Arabic-speaking countries,” despite 20 percent of Israel’s population speaking the language.

According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), there has been a 360 percent surge in antisemitism in the wake of October 7th, with antisemitic incidents rising to levels not seen in four decades.

https://nypost.com/2024/01/12/metro/rep-torres-urges-doe-to-prohibit-officials-indoctrinating-students-with-anti-israel-propaganda/

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New Jewish school in Manhattan deluged with applications in wake of October 7 attacks on Israel

A new Jewish school has been deluged with five times the applications it can accommodate in the wake of antisemitism after the October 7 attack on Israel.

Emet Classical Academy — its name is the Hebrew word “truth” — is opening this September on the Upper East Side, and officials say the school had more interest than they have seats.

“Since the announcement a few weeks ago we have received hundreds of admissions inquiries from families with kids … at elite secular private schools, Jewish day schools, public schools and G&T [gifted and talented] programs,” Rabbi Abraham Unger, head of the school for grades 6-12, told The Post.

The school, founded by conservative non-profit religious organization The Tikvah Fund, will accept between 36 and 40 students per grade its first year, according to Tikvah CEO Eric Cohen.

Kira Krieger Senders, 52, has applied for a spot for her 10-year-old son, who is currently in fifth grade at PS6 on the Upper East Side. She told The Post that, while she’s been pleased with her son’s public school promoting shared values, she has concerns as he enters middle school.

“The biggest fear I have is antisemitism. I do fear that my child will be targeted with some type of antisemitic rhetoric or action or sentiment that I don’t want him to have to deal with when he’s in school,” Krieger Senders, who is Jewish, said, adding that she experienced anti-Jewish remarks from a longtime friend following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

Emet plans to offer a curriculum rooted in Western civilization and led by Unger, a political scientist and former professor.

“Our laser focus on the core ideas and texts of Western civilization makes us unique in the current educational marketplace — and certainly very different than what is happening in most other New York City public and private schools,” Unger told The Post.

“The goal is simple: to forge citizens who will strengthen American civic life and make great contributions to every field of human endeavor.”

Emet names “the spirit of American citizenship” as one of its seven founding pillars. Students will study Hebrew, Greek and Latin in addition to the arts and sciences, along with “a strong connection to Zionism and modern Israel” and general “military history.”

https://nypost.com/2024/01/12/news/new-jewish-school-in-manhattan-deluged-with-applications/s

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DEIndividualising australia's universities

Treating people unequally on the basis of race is racism

The NBA is the least ‘inclusive’ employer in the world. Its employees look nothing like the wider American population. Some 90 percent of the league’s players are black whereas the black share of the overall US population is only about 13 per cent. In fact, the whole US Olympic basketball team, made up of NBA stars, is 100 per cent black. This is as it should be because they’re the best players. It’s simple. Professional sports is a meritocracy; it is not a top-down HR-engineered ‘equality of outcome’ world. (I refer to the competitors, not the team executives.) No team owner aims for ‘cosmetic diversity’ in sport. And revealingly, no one on the progressive left argues for more white basketball players, or even more Asians or Hispanics.

You see, sport reveals everything that is fundamentally wrong with DEI; its core undermining of equality and its undercutting of the ability to produce the best possible product. This is so obvious in top-level US sport, and there is so much at stake monetarily, that no one with skin in the game dabbles in the idiocies of DEI thinking in terms of the team they put on the court.

Of course, if you find a smart, hard-working Vietnamese (or any other) immigrant who outperforms white candidates you should hire him (or her). That, however, is not what DEI demands. No, DEI is premised on ‘equality of outcome’, on getting the same statistical percentages of a group into some highly desirable job X (it’s only ever good jobs or emoluments) as they represent in the wider population. Let me be blunt. ‘Equity’ is the polar opposite of equality of opportunity. Drill down and you see it seeks equality of outcome, full stop. That’s the game all variations of affirmative action are playing. It’s just that DEI is one of the most malign and pernicious variants.

In fact, ‘equity’ necessarily presupposes that all differences, everywhere, and all the time, are the result of discrimination and nothing else. That’s why it REQUIRES treating people unequally based on race and other immutable characteristics.

One of the most important battles all conservatives (and classical liberals for that matter) have to fight is to eliminate the HR DEI bureaucracies everywhere. We need them gone from the public service, from the big law firms, from the big corporations, and from the universities. Take the last of these, which I know only too well. A recent report in the US revealed that at just two major US state universities (Ohio State and the University of Michigan) there were over 100 DEI commissars (my term) employed. And they earned over US$10 million per year collectively – at just two of hundreds of US universities.

Now don’t kid yourself. Our Australian universities are also chock-full of these massively overpaid DEI bureaucrats whose core remit is to undermine merit and equality of opportunity. So don’t tell me we don’t have an ideological problem in our unis and that this isn’t a core cause! (The search for cosmetic diversity is also a core cause in the collapse of viewpoint diversity, as an aside.)

Well, at least in a few US states we are now seeing Republican legislators doing something about this. Some are completely defunding the DEI bureaucracies in state universities. There are moves to stop state governments from contracting with big companies that enforce DEI policies. My Lord, my kingdom for an Australian Liberal party that might actually do any of those things! I’ll be blunt. The first step to reforming our wholly broken universities (those rankings of world universities are a complete joke, by the way, as every insider knows) is to completely defund the entire DEI bureaucracies. Because as things stand now does any reader really believe that in today’s universities, a young white male gets equal treatment with non-whites and with women as regards available scholarships, consideration for job openings or for promotions, pick your favourite criterion?

It’s time for our right-of-centre politicians to grow a spine and do something about this. That’s a wish, not a serious expectation.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/deindividualising-our-universities/

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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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