Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
I’m back in Cape Town, and preparing Kruger Post #1. In the meantime, have another read about college miscreants:
See below. I told you so, but this isn’t rocket science. Anybody with two neurons to rub together could have guessed the protest engine would rev up when classes begin again, for, especially at elite schools, students are more interested in enforcing what they consider Social Justice on others than engaging in learning.
The article below (click to read), written by Judy Lucas four days ago, was published in The Ithaca Voice, the local paper. Click headline to read:
An excerpt:
The spring semester at Cornell University ended with protests, as students erected an encampment on the Arts Quad to oppose the university’s ties to institutions supporting the Israeli state. The war in Gaza raged on through the summer, with reports of thousands of more lives lost. Cornell’s fall semester started much like its last one ended.
A crowd of about 150 student protestors at Cornell University marched into a campus dining hall Monday, the first day of classes, where speakers renewed the call for the university to divest from any institutions supplying weapons and support to the Israeli military in the war against Hamas, among a set of other demands first released earlier this year.
Have a look at the list of demands, especially the “land return” demand (#1) and the usual “and-of-course-we’re-not-to-be-punished” demand (#8).
Twenty minutes into the rally, seven university police officers entered the atrium of Klarman Hall and stood guard near the protestors. At the instruction of lead organizers, students joined arms to form a chain in order to resist interactions with police.
And the kicker: no IDs proferred when asked, and no punishment (bolding is mine, and it’s all bolded because it shows the cowardice of the Cornell administration).
Officers asked protesters to hand over their student identification cards to refer them to the university’s conduct office for potential disciplinary action. None of the protestors followed orders but no arrests were made.
Have a tweet; this one has three videos and it’s just like the bawling we heard so often last year.
Welcome back! First day of classes, students & activists w/ @cmlcornell were met by 7 @Cornell officers asking for student IDs during a rally calling for the uni to divest in corps supporting Israel in the war against Hamas- atrium @ Klarman Hall- no arrests made. @ithacavoicepic.twitter.com/l1o3kRMvDM
The unions, by and large all anti-Israel (are there any pro-Israel unions?), were part of the demonstration:
The Coalition for Mutual Liberation (CML), which represents the university’s activist organizations and the group responsible for organizing and maintaining the pro-Palestinian encampment on Cornell’s Arts Quad in April, planned Monday’s demonstration.
The morning of the demonstration, graffiti reading “Israel bombs, Cornell pays” and “Blood is on your hands” was found, spray-painted in red, on the front facade of Day Hall, the university’s administrative building. The front door was also shattered.
Cornell’s Vice President for University Relations Joel Malina released a statement on behalf of the university Aug. 26. Malina wrote the administration was “appalled by the graffiti spray painted.”
“Acts of violence, extended occupation of buildings, or property damage (including graffiti) will not be tolerated and will prompt an immediate response from public safety,” Malina wrote. “Cornell Police are conducting a thorough investigation, and those responsible will be subject to suspension and criminal charges.”
Joel Malina is Cornell’s Vice President for University Relations, and if you think that anybody will be suspended or subject to criminal charges, I have some land in Florida to sell you.
Finally, the interim Provost and President sent out an email with dire warnings about what would happen to students who engaged in encampments:
Students involved in encampments would first receive a warning of their violation of the university’s policy. On a second violation, the student would receive a “non-academic temporary suspension.” After a third violation, a student would receive “temporary academic suspension.”
I guess to get a “permanent academic suspension,” you have to shoot someone.
This is only the very beginning. When asked for a comment, the University said bupkes.
Cornell University has not released a statement or comment regarding the specific demonstration Monday evening during which university police officers were involved.
In response to an email from The Ithaca Voice requesting a statement regarding the protest, a media representative for the university said “We don’t have anything specific regarding yesterday afternoon’s protest.”
Have another tweet with two videos:
Students and activists have entered Klarman Hall from two entrances. I’d guess there are at least 120 people gathered here total— half on the first floor and the other on the second. @cmlcornell@ithacavoice Speakers include Dan Vicente, Director of @UAWregion9. pic.twitter.com/UYx4lBZAgq
There are more invertebrates in Cornell’s administration than there are in one square meter of the bottom of Cape Town’s Harbour. But there’s one consolation. While Cornell’s administration is demonstrating its spinelessness, I seriously doubt that it will give in to any of the student demands.
I think there’s little doubt that the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protests will once again roil colleges campuses this coming academic year. As protestors vow that they’ll continue their activities, legal or not, and as Israel continues to root Hamas out of Gaza, I fully expect more trouble come this fall.
So do colleges, which are at this moment preparing for such trouble by confecting new regulations and policies. We have two articles on this subject, one in the NYT (first below) and the other in the Times of Israel. Click each headline to read; if the NYT is paywalled, you can find the first article archived here.
Note about what’s below: Daniel Diermeier used to be the Provost of the University of Chicago; now he’s the Chancellor (equivalent to the President) of Vanderbilt University, where he’s still carrying out the Chicago Principles, including free expression and institutional neutrality. Indented text is from the press; text flush left is mine. An excerpt from the NYT about Diermeier’s address to this year’s entering class at Vandy:
Less than 10 minutes had passed before Daniel Diermeier, Vanderbilt University’s chancellor, told hundreds of new students what the school would not do.
The university would not divest from Israel.
It would not banish provocative speakers.
It would not issue statements in support or condemnation of Israeli or Palestinian causes.
Before the hour was up on Monday, he added that Vanderbilt would not tolerate threats, harassment or protests “disrupting the learning environment.”
As you see, Diermeier pulls no punches.
This month, Vanderbilt required all first-year undergraduate students to attend mandatory meetings about the university’s approach to free speech, with the hope that clear expectations — and explanations for them — would help administrators keep order after protests rocked American campuses toward the end of the last academic year.
“The chaos on campuses is because there’s lack of clarity on these principles,” Dr. Diermeier said in an interview.
Well, that’s one reason, and I didn’t hear his talk, but the universal hope in all of the new “solutions” to protests is based on the claim that students simply don’t understand how free speech works on campuses, including private ones like Chicago and Vanderbilt. An important difference between “college” free speech and speech in the public arena is that colleges can more easily create “time, place, and manner” restrictions so that while legal speech is allowed, it mustn’t interfere with the mission of the university: no sit-ins or trespassing, no loud megaphones that disrupt classes, no encampments to block access to parts of campus, no deplatforming of speakers.
The problem I see is that the protestors in many places already know about these restrictions, and are determined to violate them anyway. They regard this as a form of civil disobedience—but one that, unlike classical civil disobedience, does not accept any attendant punishment. Indeed, just a handful of protestors who violated university regulations last year received either civil or University punishment, so there’s no incentive to at least go through the motions of obeying free-speech regulations. From later in the article:
Even as some universities have prepared more rigorous rules and procedures, it remains to be seen how strongly or consistently they will be enforced. The lasting consequences of defiance are also murky. Officials nationwide ultimately dropped many of the criminal charges that protesters faced after the spring demonstrations, and school discipline is still pending for many students. Suspensions have often been lifted in the meantime.
This is why universities’ solution to bring more “clarity” to free-speech rules seems hopeless. The solution, I think, is simply to enforce the rules.
University presidents used summer break to huddle with police commanders, lawyers, trustees and other administrators to rewrite rules, tighten protest zones, and weigh possible concessions to maintain, or restore, order. Many have studied universities that temporarily defused tensions by striking deals with protesters.
But so far, universities are signaling little overt interest in negotiations.
On Monday, the University of California’s president, Michael V. Drake, told campus chancellors to ensure that their policies included bans on unapproved encampments and “masking to conceal identity.” Columbia University, where contentious protests helped drive Nemat Shafik from her 13-month-old presidency on Aug. 14, is limiting campus access. Northwestern University said that students would receive “mandatory trainings on antisemitism and other forms of hate,” with more policy changes coming.
“The question is how do we get more consistent in the way we respond to these issues — and clearer about what the rules are and what the tiered responses will be,” said Richard K. Lyons, the new chancellor at the University of California, Berkeley, a campus with one of the nation’s most robust records of protest. Dr. Lyons estimated that planning for demonstrations had consumed up to 15 percent of the summer for top administrators at Berkeley.
And there have been legal rulings that can force universities’ hands:
A series of recent court rulings, as well as investigations from Capitol Hill and the Department of Education, have created pressure on universities. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction this month that said the University of California, Los Angeles, could not allow protesters to block Jewish students from campus facilities. (Although U.C.L.A. initially warned that the ruling threatened to “hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground,” it decided not to appeal and said it would “abide by the injunction as this case makes its way through the courts.”)
Can you believe that UCLA defended the behavior of protestors to keep Jewish students away from their classrooms? Here’s a video of the blocking I remember at the time:
The complaint [by three Jewish students] alleges the protesters created a “Jew Exclusion Zone” where in order to pass “a person had to make a statement pledging their allegiance to the activists’ view.” Those who complied with the protesters’ view were issued wristbands to allow them to pass through, the complaint says, which effectively barred Jewish students who supported Israel and denied them access to the heart of campus.
Wristbands! Oy vey!
Our own University, like Vanderbilt, did not divest nor tolerate the encampments for very long, though it did give the encampers what I consider an overly long grace period.
The University of Chicago’s own experience this year suggests that even those deeply held principles do not always prevent turmoil. In May, the university brought in the police to remove an encampment that violated its policy barring unapproved tents.
At any rate, the divisions on campus are now so deep, and the protestors so sure of their moral compass, that I see no rapprochement, no matter how much universities inculcate students with the First Amendment or campus speech regulations.
The solution, which is Diermeier’s is simple, just follow through with campus speech violations by enforcing the rules. In my view, students will be loath to participate in illegal protests if they know that they’re going to be suspended, expelled, or have a punishment noted on their college transcripts. For even more than the students want divestment and a ceasefire, they want their degrees, an untarnished academic record. and jobs. I’m still baffled why many universities are simply letting the protestors off scot-free.
The Times of Israel simply lets us know that more disruptions of campuses are in store (click to read):
An excerpt:
The Student Intifada, a growing coalition of pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist student groups, is making clear its intention to disrupt the fall semester on school campuses across the United States.
Across dozens of campuses currently opening their fall semesters, there are already calls for masked vigils in support of “Palestine.” Troublingly, many of the groups have gone from calling for demonstrations and encampments to condoning the use of violence and “the total eradication of Western civilization.”
Note that, as some like Douglas Murray have warned, the protestors are not simply anti-Israel, but anti-West and anti-Enlightenment. The article continues.
The Student Intifada’s roots can be traced to the National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), founded in 1993 at the University of California Berkeley. However, it’s picked up followers since the war in Gaza and then again with the media attention on Columbia University following last year’s highly-covered student encampment.
With the National SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] as its guide, the movement isn’t limited to local SJP chapters. But it’s not so much the coalition’s reach that troubles some, but rather its refusal to engage with different perspectives.
“The movement is a belief cascade where those in the group compete with each other for acceptance. As they do that, their opinions become more and more extreme,” said William J. Bernstein, author of “Delusions of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups.”
Excuse my cynicism, but I don’t think introductory units on critical thinking, free speech, and civil discussion required for first-year students are going to solve this problem. More:
Across dozens of campuses currently opening their fall semesters, there are already calls for masked vigils in support of “Palestine.” Troublingly, many of the groups have gone from calling for demonstrations and encampments to condoning the use of violence and “the total eradication of Western civilization.”
Yep, all of Western civilization.
The Student Intifada’s roots can be traced to the National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), founded in 1993 at the University of California Berkeley. However, it’s picked up followers since the war in Gaza and then again with the media attention on Columbia University following last year’s highly-covered student encampment.
. . . “Expect to see zero compromise”
With the National SJP as its guide, the movement isn’t limited to local SJP chapters. But it’s not so much the coalition’s reach that troubles some, but rather its refusal to engage with different perspectives.
“The movement is a belief cascade where those in the group compete with each other for acceptance. As they do that, their opinions become more and more extreme,” said William J. Bernstein, author of “Delusions of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups.”
“No matter how high their SAT scores were, they don’t have the critical thinking skills they need. They are incapable of putting themselves in other people’s shoes. They are utterly intolerant of other views,” Bernstein said.
. . . University leaders should expect the students to become more strident in their demands this fall, said Lauren Post, an analyst with the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.
“They are going to increase their efforts to drive Zionist institutions off campus. They are going to make the average Jewish and Zionist student increasingly uncomfortable. We can expect to see zero compromise from these groups,” Post said.
. . . . In a July 31 Instagram post, the University of Chapel Hill SJP appeared to back the right to use violence.
“We emphasize our support for the right to resistance, not only in Palestine, but also here in the imperial core. We condone all forms of principled action, including armed rebellion, necessary to stop Israel’s genocide and apartheid, and to dismantle imperialism and capitalism more broadly. The oppressors will never grant full liberty to the oppressed; the oppressed must seize liberty with their own hands,” the post said.
The Times of Israel also emphasizes the lack of sanctions for violators, again mentioning my school:
There were an estimated 3,200 people, not all of them students, arrested at colleges and universities last spring, according to the Associated Press. Most of the charges against students have since been dropped.
Other universities, including the University of Chicago and Harvard, withheld degrees from some pro-Palestinian students facing disciplinary measures for their part in encampments and protests. Many of them have since received their diplomas.
About those “nonstudents” demonstrating at many colleges, which also happened at Chicago, it’s a simple matter to ask for IDs, something that students at the U of C must produce on demand. Then names can be taken and trespassers in unapproved demonstrations given the boot.
Two caveats. First of all, as always I am an exponent of free speech on all campuses, public and private. I’m even at the extreme of those free-speechers who think that someone shouting “gas the Jews” on campus in a situation that isn’t likely to provoke violence should not be punished. What I object to is students, with full knowledge, violating campus regulations and, by so doing, impeding the mission of colleges: access to learning. And I object to universities growling about this but doing absolutely nothing to the violators.
There’s a reason why speed traps work: those who speed do so at their own risk (and the risk of others), knowing that they’ll have to get a ticket and a fine. The result: if you know there are speed traps in an area, you slow down.
As an experiement on what happens when deterrence vanishes, read about Montreal’s Murray-Hill Police Strike in 1969. (This is also an object lesson for those who think that you can solve the problem of crime by getting rid of cops and using patrolling by locals.)
Second, I think students deserve a warning when engaged in illegal demonstrations before they’re disciplined. The encampers in Chicago got several days of warnings before the cops took down the encampment (without a single person hurt) at 4:30 a.m. last May 7. Those shouting down speakers or occupying buildings should get, say, ten minutes of warnings before the hammer comes down. Finally, there should be no illegal encampments: not a single tent stake should be driven into prohibited college ground without University officials saying, “Sorry, you can’t do that.”
By all means have introductions to free speech and moderated discussions of first-year students to teach them how free speech works, and why we have it. But that’s not enough. I’m stymied by the failure of universities to realize a simple principle of human behavior: if you give people meaningful punishment for doing something that’s prohibited, they will stop doing it.
A regulation that’s no enforced is a regulation without teeth.
Congressional hearings about free speech and anti-semitism at Penn, Harvard, MIT and Columbia have now resulted in the resignation of the third of these Presidents. Yes, Columbia President Nemat Shafik, following Presidents Claudine Gay of Harvard and Liz Magill of Penn out the door, has resigned her post. President President Sally Kornbluth of MIT remains in her job.
The brouhaha began last December when, facing two House panels, three Presidents said that in some cases, depending on context, calls for genocide of the Jews might not violate university regulations. Indeed, this was correct according to a First-Amendment construal of this kind of speech. The problem was that these universities, purporting to adhere to the First Amendment, didn’t really do so for other kinds of speech, so they were really guilty of hypocritical and unequal enforcement. And their presentations on the Hill were stiff and unempathic. Shafik, grilled this April, angered those who said she’d done very little to curb antisemitism on her campus.
Further, Claudine Gay was later accused of serious and multiple incidents of plagiarism, and, in light of all the bad publicity, Harvard gave Gay the boot. Harvard now has now an interim President, Alan Garber, who will run Harvard for the next two years while it looks for a permanent President.
Click below to read the story. Shafik proved hamhanded in the face of pro-Palestinian and antisemitic behavior on campus, with apparently no students being disciplined, including those who stormed and occupied a Columbia building.
Click to read:
An excerpt:
Columbia University’s president, Nemat Shafik, resigned on Wednesday after months of far-reaching fury over her handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations and questions over her management of a bitterly divided campus.
She was the third leader of an Ivy League university to resign in about eight months following maligned appearances before Congress about antisemitism on their campuses.
Dr. Shafik, an economist who spent much of her career in London, said in a letter to the Columbia community that while she felt the campus had made progress in some important areas, it had also been a period of turmoil “where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community.”
What she means is that she can’t manage to stop violations of campus rules for encampment and behavior by pro-Palestinian students. This is because Columbia won’t discipline violators. A lot of the lack of discipline stems from the attitudes of Columbia faculty, many of whom supported the illegal protests and called for Shafik’s resignation after she called the police to dismantle the local encampment. Caught between Jewish faculty and students on one hand and pro-Palestinian faculty on the other, Shafik was rendered powerless. More:
She added that her resignation was effective immediately, and that she would be taking a job with Britain’s foreign secretary to lead a review of the government’s approach to international development.
The university’s board of trustees named Dr. Katrina A. Armstrong, a medical doctor who has been the chief executive of Columbia’s medical center and dean of its medical school since 2022, as the interim president. The board did not immediately announce a timeline for appointing a permanent leader.
. . . But as much as its sudden end, the brevity of Dr. Shafik’s presidency underscores how profoundly pro-Palestinian demonstrations shook her campus and universities across the country.
Facing accusations that she was permitting antisemitism to go unchecked on campus, Dr. Shafik made a conciliatory appearance before Congress in April that ended up enraging many members of her own faculty. She summoned the police to Columbia’s campus twice, including to clear an occupied building. The moves angered some students and faculty, even as others in the community, including some major donors, said she had not done enough to protect Jewish students on campus.
Dr. Shafik’s tenure was among the shortest in Columbia’s 270-year history, and much of it was a sharp reminder of the challenges facing university presidents, who have sometimes struggled recently to lead upended campuses while balancing student safety, free speech and academic freedom.
Few university leaders were as publicly linked to that dilemma as Dr. Shafik, whose school emerged as a hub of the campus protests that began after the Israel-Hamas war erupted last year.
Those protests, as well as accusations of endemic antisemitism, drew the attention of House Republicans, who orchestrated a series of hearings in Washington starting last year.
But make no mistake about it: the protests will continue this next academic year at Columbia and at other schools. The war in Gaza continues, and Israel is still demonized by many academics (remember that the American Association of University Professors just eliminated their two-decade opposition to academic boycotts, undoubtedly to allow boycotts of Israel).
And so Columbia has a color-coded system to indicate the degree of protest occurring on the campus. This is ridiculous:
To prepare for the possibility of renewed protests in the fall, the university announced a new color-coded system to guide the community on protest risk level on campus, similar to a Homeland Security advisory system. The level was recently set from Green to Orange [JAC: there’s also red], the second-highest, meaning “moderate risk.” Only people with Columbia identification are permitted to enter the central campus, which in the past has been open to the public.
College protesters have vowed to come back stronger than ever to push their main demand that Columbia divest from weapons manufacturers and other companies that profit from the occupation of Palestinian territories.
“Regardless of who leads Columbia, the students will continue their activism and actions until Columbia divests from Israeli apartheid,” said Mahmoud Khalil, a student negotiator on behalf of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the main protest movement. “We want the president to be a president for Columbia students, answering to their needs and demands, rather than answering to political pressure from outside the university.”
I doubt that Columbia, like Chicago and many other schools, will agree to divest, for that is eliminating institutional neutrality in the investment of college funds. As so long as there are calls for divestment, and the universities refuse to divest, the protests will continue. Coming this fall: Code Red, when almost nobody will be allowed on Columbia’s campus.
Of course free speech, along the lines of the Chicago Prnciples, should reign at all campuses, but there should also be time, place, and manner restrictions so that speech doesn’t impede the functioning of the university (e.g. deplatforming speakers, sit-ins in campus buildings, use of bullhorns during class). So far these restrictions have largely been ignored by schools like Columbia, loath to have officials or police “lay hands” on protestors since that creates bad “optics.”. But if these illegal protests continue, then we can kiss higher education in America goodbye. But who cares? The pro-Palestinian protestors aren’t interested in holding universities to their mission. Rather, they want to bend universities to their own ideology, and many, in the end, want to efface the principles of Western democracy.
Canada has been proving itself the most spineless country in the world when it comes to dealing with illegal campus activism (or other performative activism). Take, for example, The University of Windsor in Ontario, which until now I thought was a respectable university. They’ve had an encampment for two months, and the students, as usual, made a number of demands before they’d take it down. But in a sickening display of cowardice, Windsor University made a deal with the students, one in which the University capitulates to a number of ridiculous demands. I receive a copy of what is purported to be the agreement, and will send it to you if you ask (it’s too long to reproduce here). But I’ll put some of the agreements below.
UPDATE: I now realized that the agreement is linked to in the CBC report (here), so I don’t need to send it to you. But the copy I received is very slightly different from that at the CBC link (the latter, for example, calls for an academic boycott of Israel, while that bit has been crossed out in what I received.)
First, though, here’s an article from the CBC news site that describes the agreement. Click headline to read:
And the story. I’ll put below the specifics from the agreement that i was sent. Bolding is mine.
The University of Windsor says it’s reached a deal with students with a pro-Palestinian encampment that began in mid-May, and all tents will be removed from the southwestern Ontario campus within 48 hours.
“This includes peacefully ending the encampment,” the school said in a news release.
The school says the deal also includes more anti-racism initiatives, support for students impacted by the crisis in Gaza, “responsible” investing, and annual disclosures of direct and indirect public fund investments.
The agreement also involves boycotting institutional partnerships with Israeli universities until the “right of Palestinian self-determination has been realized.”
It’s the “most comprehensive and far-reaching” agreement to come out of Canadian encampment negotiations addressing issues like divestment, academic boycott and anti-Palestinian racism, the protesters said in a statement Wednesday afternoon.The encampment has been in front of the former Dillon Hall since May 13.
Negotiations between the two sides have been going on for four weeks, the group says.
“This deal presents to the students, staff, faculty and community as a whole that the university is willing to take solid steps towards a more transparent and just investment system, and rebuilding Gaza,” said Jana Alrifai, a spokesperson for the protest.
“It is a recognition of its past shortcomings and a commitment to betterment. Most importantly, this would have never happened without the fight and steadfastness of the student movement.”
Here are some other details in the agreement:
The university will establish anti-Palestinian racism training and education, which will be recommended for faculty, staff and students. The training will be mandatory for the leadership team and board of governors.
The university has 30 days to set up an anti-oppression website, which will include third-party information and resources on anti-Arab racism, anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia.
Students who part of the encampment won’t get any academic or employment sanctions for participating in or supporting the encampment.
The protesters will hold a 5 p.m. ET news conference on Wednesday.
Their encampment is among numerous ones set up on Canadian campuses since April, related to the Israel-Hamas war that began in October. Most of the encampments have since come down.
On Wednesday, an encampment at Montreal’s McGill University was dismantled as police, some wearing riot gear, and others on bicycles and on horseback, descended near the campus after the university served two eviction notices to protesters.
But we’re talking not about McGill but about Windsor. As I said, I was sent a copy via an email that said this was the agreement signed by both sides, and will show you a bit of what is in it. If you want to see the whole agreement, go here.
Clicking on the heading will take you to the agreement linked to the CBC report, but the quotes I give below come from what I was sent—with the exception of the call for an academic boycott of Israel (it’s in the CBC linked copy but not in what I got). I cannot vouch for which copy of the agreement is the final one, but there’s almost no difference between them.
And some stuff they agreed on. CONTENT WARNING: ARRANT COWARDICE BY CANADIAN ADMINISTRATORS:
The University of Windsor is in the process of developing its first-ever anti-racism policy. A central feature of the policy will be a focus on identity-based oppression, including anti-Arab racism, anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia. The University will use its best efforts to complete the process by December 31, 2024. The University commits to including Palestinian, Arab and Muslim voices as part of the policy consultation. Regular updates will be provided on the Vice-President, People, Equity andInclusion’s website.
The University commits to establishing an anti-oppression website within 30 days of the ratification of this agreement, which will include institutional and third party information and resources on anti-Arab racism, anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia, linked for the benefit of students, faculty, staff and community members
The University agrees to establish anti-Palestinian racism training and education, which will be recommended for faculty, staff and students. The training and education will be mandatory for the Executive Leadership Team and the Board of Governors members.
The University agrees to make internal research grants available for application by students and faculty on the topic of Palestine in all of its dimensions.
The University agrees that students will not receive any academic or employment sanctions for their participation in, or support for, the encampment, bearing in mind the broad protections provided by the freedoms of expression, association, and assembly
No punishments, as usual!
The University agrees to remove the Aspire Anti-Racism information sheet from its website. [JAC: I don’t know what this website said.]
The University will invest funds as required to extend the Scholars at Risk program for an additional year (to end in 2025). Future institutional support for the program beyond 2025 will be reviewed annually by the University based on the availability of funding. The University will make the securing of funding for the continuation of the Scholars at Risk program a priority in its future financial planning. The University will make special efforts to recruit Palestinian scholars who have been impacted by the occupation of Palestine and the scholasticide in Gaza.
Scholasticide!
The University will endeavour to support students impacted by global conflicts and humanitarian crises, including Palestinian students, who have demonstrated urgent housing needs during the Intersession/Summer term with residence housing.
Provide counselling services for Palestinian, Muslim and BIPOC students which will address the rise of racism and Islamophobia. Ensure the necessary resources to ensure counselling is delivered by racial-trauma-focused therapists
The university will facilitate mental health support groups for students experiencing trauma related to the ongoing occupation of Palestine, not less than quarterly.
Anything about helping Jews or Israelis, or Jewish students affected by the war or antisemitism? I don’t see it. But wait—there are TEN PAGES OF THIS STUFF. And of course Windsor has to change its investment policies to the liking of the encampers:
The University administration agrees to propose to the Board investment committee an expansion of its RI Policy to include a new section on Human Rights and International Law. The section would be modeled after Section C. Climate Change. The section would include a commitment to review the weapons manufacturing industry, with particular attention on companies involved in manufacturing arms used in conflict zones where UN human rights mechanisms or resolutions have determined that serious violations of international human rights, humanitarian or criminal law have occurred. The section would provide an opportunity for the University to develop an operational procedure for its RI Policy based on human rights and international law. This operational procedure would be grounded in United Nations resolutions on human rights situations, and the work of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Special Procedures and United Nations human rights commissions of inquiry as well as decisions of domestic legal bodies.
The University will prepare an annual responsible investing report, disclosing all investments in indirect, direct and pooled funds held in its Pension Fund, Endowment Fund and Working Capital Fund. The report shall be made publicly available. The first report will be published by December 31, 2024. The annual disclosure will provide a list of public companies within the indirect,direct and pooled funds and the amount of investments in each fund The annual disclosure will explain the application of the RI Policy, including the ESG factors and human rights, to the University’s investment decisions.
The University acknowledges the dire situation faced by Palestinian universities under Israeli occupation. This includes the destruction of the Palestinian universities in Gaza and the unjustified restrictions and frequent closures faced by Palestinian universities in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The University commits to establishing or reestablishing institutional relationships with Palestinian universities, which will include research partnerships and scholarly exchanges. Within its resources, the University will assist with, and support, the restoration of post-secondary education in Gaza.
The University will recommend to the Senate that it explore the feasibility of implementing a Palestine Studies minor under the Interdisciplinary and Critical Studies Department. Courses under this program will aim to explore Palestine in all of its dimensions.
Finally, the encampers have forced the University to violate institutional neutrality and agree with the UN’s demonization of Israel. Windsor has no fricking business to weigh in on the war or politics, for it violates institutional neutrality by taking an official University position on the war. That, of course, chills the speech of those (presumably many) who disagree with the agreement and the stuff that Windsor will say in its capitulation:
Within 72 hours of the ratification of this agreement, the University will send a letter to the Government of Canada calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire. In the letter, it will also urge the Government of Canada to include anti-Palestinian racism within its Anti-Racism Strategy. Further, it will request that the Government of Canada should be generous in the humanitarian aid that it delivers to Palestine in order to enable Gaza to engage in reconstruction for its people, and to assist the Palestinians to realize their right to self-determination. The University will post the letter on its website.
This is in the document linked to at the CBC site, but is crossed out in the copy I was sent. If it really was agreed on, it calls for an academic boycott of Israel.
The University does not hold any active institutional academic partnerships with Israeli institutions. Because of the challenging environment for academic collaboration the University agrees to not pursue any institutional academic agreements with Israeli universities until the right of Palestinian self-determination has been realized, as determined by the United Nations, unless supported by Senate. This does not prevent individual academics at the University of Windsor from working (or collaborating) with academics in Israel.
Finally, there’s this—more taking sides in a conflict and more chilling of speech at Windsor:
For the purposes of the application of its RI Policy, the University recognizes that the United Nations, through its various bodies – including the Secretary General, the Security Council, the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council, the International Court of Justice and human rights commissions of inquiry – has found Israel, the occupying power, to be in serious violation of international law and human rights in the conduct of its occupation of Palestinian territory. It also recognizes that the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has established an active database of companies whom it has identified are engaged with the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Of course there’s bupkes about Hamas violating international law.
This whole document is simply reprehensible, a sickening display of cowardice (and antisemitism) on the part of Windsor University, which commits itself to taking the side of Hamas in the war and providing resources to Palestine and Palestinian students that aren’t offered to Israeli or Jewish students. There are plenty of initiatives against “Islamophobia,” but I don’t see a single one against antisemitism. Does Windsor do all this stuff for Israeli academics, professors, and students? Perhaps they already have similar policies in place with respect to Israel (extra counseling for Jewish students, etc.), but I doubt it.
Again, if you want to see the whole nauseating agreement, click here.
A new poll by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has some good news and some bad news. I’ll highlight what I see are the important results, but you can read the whole thing by clicking below.
The poll was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago (formerly the National Opinion Research Center), and their results are generally solid. The sample, says the page, “The
.. . . was conducted May 17-19, 2024, using NORC’s AmeriSpeak® probability-based panel, and sampled 1,309 Americans. The overall margin of error for the survey is +/- 4%.
Here are some graphs:
While some of these protest actions are regulated on campuses (ours, for example, regulates the times when you can use amplified sound), the poll is simply about whether it’s okay for college students to engage in these activities. No “time, place, or manner” restrictions are discussed.
Given that, and looking at the dark and light red bars as indications of “not very acceptable”, we see pretty much what we expect. What’s surprising is that a huge majority of Americans (these are not just students) find burning an American flag unacceptable (about 70% “never acceptable and 12% “rarely acceptable”), despite the fact that burning an American flag is protected as free speech by the First Amendment! (So is holding signs.) Americans either don’t know or don’t care about that interpretation of flag-burning by the courts. As the FIRE site notes:
“It’s no shocker that Americans tend to disapprove of illegal and illiberal conduct by student protesters,” said FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens. “But it’s alarming that a third of Americans say constitutionally protected and non-threatening activities like sign-holding or petitions are only ‘sometimes’ or ‘rarely’ acceptable. Nonviolent protest should always be acceptable on college campuses.”
But I disagree with FIRE in part here as there are time, place, and manner restrictions that apply even to nonviolent protests. Blocking access to campus or impeding classes with megaphones and shouting are nonviolent forms of protest, but prevent academia from operating propetly. In my view, FIRE is simply wrong that these should always be acceptable. Much of the time, yes, but not always.
Encamping is also of interest, and 43% of American think that establishing them is “never acceptable” while about 22% see them as “rarely acceptable”. About 25% see encampments as “sometimes or always acceptable”, with the “sometimes” outnumbering “always’ here. Whether universities consider encampment acceptable, of course, depends on the school and the form of encampment. Williams College, for instance, had a small, out-of-the-way encampment and nobody was bothered.
Here are the consequences that the American public thinks should fall onto students participating in encampments.
FIRE’s summary:
Nearly three-fourths of Americans (72%) believe that campus protesters who participated in encampments should be punished, but only 18% believe they should receive the harshest penalty of expulsion. Other responses ran the gamut from suspension (13%), to probation (16%), to written reprimand (12%), to community service (13%). Only 23% believe the students should receive no punishment at all.
LOL; I think more than 23% of colleges themselves believe that encamping students should receive no punishment at all. At least that’s my guess based on the number of students who seem to be getting of scot-free for encamping. As for punishment, there’s roughly equal sentiment in faor of a written reprimand, community service, probation, suspension, or expulsion. Perhaps a written reprimand would be okay for students who are first-time violators, but the penalty should go up if there are previous violations on a student’s record, and also on how much warning they were given by the university, as well as whether they engaged in any harassment of individuals during the encampment.
There’s a bit more:
“Public colleges and universities can usually ban encampments without violating the First Amendment, so long as the ban serves a reasonable purpose, enforcement is consistent and viewpoint-neutral, and students maintain other avenues for expressing themselves,” said FIRE Director of Campus Rights Advocacy Lindsie Rank. “Universities can’t disproportionately punish students just because administrators don’t agree with the viewpoint being expressed at the encampment.”
Agreed!
And I’ve saved the good news for last:
FIRE’s summary:
Almost two-thirds of Americans (63%) said that the campus protests had no impact at all on their level of sympathy for Palestinians in Gaza, and respondents were as likely to say that the campus protests made them sympathize less with the Palestinians (17%) as they were to say they made them sympathize more (16%).
In other words, the net effect of campus protests—and they surely mean “pro-Palestinian protests”—is ZERO: as just as many people become more sympathetic as become less sympathetic, while most people don’t change their minds at all. In other words, the protests are performative, at least with respect to American opinion. They could, of course, hearten or disappoint Hamas, but again the net effect would be nil. What the protests do accomplish is reduce America’s confidence in colleges and universities, which seems to be continuously slipping. And yes, that’s bad news:
FIRE’s poll also shows that American confidence in colleges and universities continues to slip. Only 28% of respondents said that they have either a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in U.S. colleges and universities. By comparison, 36% of Americans told Gallup in summer 2023 that they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education in the U.S.
The FIRE summary concludes with more bad news: a pessimistic take of Americans on whether institutions of higher education protest free speech
Colleges received middling grades in particular on the issue of protecting speech. Almost half of Americans (47%) say that it is “not at all” or “not very” clear that college administrators protect free speech on their campus. Roughly two-in-five Americans (42%) said that it is “not at all”or “not very” likely that a school administration would defend a speaker’s right to express their views during a controversy on campus.
The Democratic National Convention (DNC) will be held in Chicago from August 19-22, and fortunately I’ll be out of town then. It may be even more violent than the infamous 1968 DNC, since this time we’ll have domestic protestors, including the vocal pro-Palestinian ones, along with sundry other protesters and, as CNN reports, there seem to be credible threats that outside terrorist groups may try to incite lone-wolf violence:
Federal and local authorities have been closely following the threat stream from both domestic and foreign extremist groups. A recent joint intelligence bulletin from the National Counterterrorism Center, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI warned that groups, including al Qaeda and ISIS, continue to generate propaganda urging followers to conduct “lone wolf” attacks on US soil using basic methods such as gunfire in crowded places or vehicles in ramming attacks. The bulletin cites an al Qaeda online propaganda article that highlighted the “increased division between the American people, between the right and the left, and between the Republicans and their supporters, and the Democrats and their supporters,” which could increase the impact of any attack.
“I think everyone has a sense that the threats are real. This is not an academic exercise that we’re running through. We are planning for real-world possibilities,” said Jeff Burnside, the Secret Service coordinator for the Democratic convention.
Oy! Or perhaps I shouldn’t say that, as it marks me for a Zionist, and a lot of the rancor seems to be directed at them (see tweets and article below).
The only certainty now is that there will be protests, and that the convention will nominate Joe Biden and Kamala Harris no matter what.
At any rate, two reporters for the Free Press have published a new article in which they embedded themselves among activists, and what they found wasn’t pretty. In the FP’s daily newsletter, however, Bari Weiss adds that the protesters have a goal beyond supporting Palestine and Hamas:
Are we going to become a country in which journalists are regularly surrounded and threatened for doing their jobs? Are we going to become a place in which marauding bands of masked young people harass Jews visiting a memorial for the 364 Israelis murdered at a music festival? Because that happened yesterday too. Are we going to become a place where it is normal for people to get on the subway and declare: “Raise your hands if you’re a Zionist. This is your chance to get out.” Yes, also yesterday. Or where police and security guards are regularly assaulted in the course of doing their jobs? (See this from UCLA last night.)
My point here is that anyone trying to convince you that this is about a faraway war, or that the anger in our streets is mostly because Benjamin Netanyahu is the current Israeli prime minister—anyone who insists this is a Jewish issue—is deluding you and themselves. So are those who comfort themselves by insisting that this will pass by like some idiot wind. It will not.
This is about a choice we face. A choice about what kind of country we want to be—and what kind of country we are at risk of becoming. The only way to understand that is to listen to what these protesters say they want. And what they are shouting for—what they openly desire—is not peace, but terror.
I added some of Weiss’s introduction because recently we’ve discussed the notion that some protesters, unwittingly or not, are trying to dismantle “Western values”—the values of an Enlightenment-informed liberal democracy—in favor of authoritarianism. But I also added those three paragraphs because they link to the tweets I’ve put below.
Click below to read (or find the article archived here).
Excerpts from Reingold and Lake’s piece are indented:
In 1968, the Democratic Convention in Chicago was a bloodbath, with 600 arrests in one street battle that was broadcast all over the world. And the group that met here last Saturday, in the local headquarters of the Teamsters Union, wants to repeat history when Joe Biden is named the presidential nominee at the DNC this August. They oppose the president they call “Genocide Joe” for backing Israel in its war against Hamas.
“If we don’t get a permit, are we still going to march?” Iosbaker asked the crowd, who responded with a chorus of “Yeah!”
“Are we still gonna march within sight and sound? Are we gonna let Genocide Joe come here and not hear us and see us? No! From Chicago to Palestine, protesting is not a crime.”
Well, yes, protesting is sometimes a crime, as the “Marshal Training Guide” below admits. It’s a crime when it incites predictable and imminent violence, or when it violates the “time, place, and manner” restrictions that the city will impose on demonstrators (the venue for the DNC is the United Center, Chicago’s big indoor arena where the local hockey and basketball teams play).
Here’s the meeting that Reingold and Lake attended:
Over a single day, the “March on DNC 2024” conference gathered 75 organizations to discuss how they plan to disrupt the convention. Speakers told the crowd how to flood the streets without getting arrested, how to spot members of the Secret Service, and how to say “Death to America” in Farsi. At one point, when news of Iran’s attack on Israel spread throughout the room, the crowd erupted in cheers.
. . . The event attracted some unsavory characters. Four speakers have hadtheir homesraided bythe FBI for their alleged ties to terrorist groups, and one attendee, Jesse Nevel, was federally charged for “working on behalf of the Russian government.” One “anarchist” distributed his homemade magazine that included drawings of machetes and the essay “In Defense of Looting.”
You can see Olivia Reingold talking about the meeting in this interview, which has some video of the speakers.
The FP article has a photo of the machetes, which does worry me a tad, but it’s just one guy. What worries me more, as it worries the local politicians and Democrats, is that the city isn’t prepared for the protests, and you know how unruly and, worse, unlawful some pro-Palestinian protestors can get. Remember the encampments?
The prospect that the convention could devolve into the kind of anarchy actively being plotted at this conference has Chicago Democrats worried, several party insiders told The Free Press. Four politicians said they fear the city—and especially the administration of Mayor Brandon Johnson—aren’t prepared for the protests.
I’m pretty sure that’s true. On the local NBC News last night, a reporter said that the cops were going to take it easy on the demonstrators, and intervene only if there was violence, even if there was unlawful protesting. But I’m not sure whether the local cops are even trained to deal with violence, or how to avoid getting provoked into becoming violent. As I’ve reported, they simply refused to intervene in taking down the University of Chicago’s encampment, leaving the job to the campus cops (who, fortunately, did a good job, and nobody got hurt). But Mayor Brandon Johnson seems out of his depth.
A bit more on the conference:
Back at the conference, about a hundred activists are passing around a clipboard with a sign-up “to supervise and protect organized disruption that’s happening on the streets.” These “marshals,” as they are called by the activists, provide medical care, scurry up and down a procession to deliver information, and lure police into confrontations, said Sief Salameh, a member of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network. (On October 7, the network published a press release describing the terrorist attacks by Hamas as “self-defense operations.”)
Salameh says he aims to have one marshal for every five hundred protesters, who will help the crowd take over the street. A private link to a “Marshal Training Guide” was given to the group, offering techniques for blocking traffic during an “unpermitted march,” including forming a “line between cops and marchers” and bringing “vocal attention to violent, harassing cops (i.e., shout ‘shame, shame’ while pointing at cops).”
I’m glad that the “Marshal training guide” doesn’t encourage violence, but it does seem to promote “unpermitted marches”, like blocking traffic. Well, if that’s the worst that could happen, it’s not terrible. But I’m expecting more than simply blocking traffic: I’m expecting violence and property damage. The article does give a photo of a group of protesters planning the August action, Of course they’re all wearing masks, and that’s not a sign of covid protection, but a sign of cowardice:
(from the FP) A group of activists at the “March on DNC 2024” conference pose for a photo while chanting “education is a right, not just for the rich and white.” (Photo by Olivia Reingold)
This doesn’t bode well, and you can bet that none of these activists will be barefaced in August.
Below are two tweets mentioned by Weiss in her introduction and one I found on Reingold’s Twitter site:
First, here’s reporter Reingold (a “Zionist,” no doubt) getting harassed and “kiffiyehed” at a protest in New York City. Surrounding opponents with kiffiyehs and flags also happened on our campus during the Encampment. It’s almost certainly illegal, as it’s restricting movement and threatening, but if there were cops there, they didn’t do squat, Reingold has guts, and the protesters are unhinged, probably desperately looking to dispel their anger by harassing other people, including a reporter who wasn’t the least threatening. (She was there to interview the protesters.)
The Free Press reporter @Olivia_Reingold filed a police report after an anti-Israel mob swarmed her at a protest Monday in Union Square. While shouting “blood on your hands” and “genocide supporter,” they restricted her movement and blew air horns in her ears. One even grabbed… pic.twitter.com/991j0sMrmQ
This one may cross the boundary into non-protected speech, as it seems to be a threat that could incite imminent violence. But no “Zionists” got out, and since “Zionists” has become the polite synonym for “Jew”, and this is in New York, you can bet that there were Jews on the car who didn’t raise their hand. Surely they feared getting beat up. One constitutional scholar I hard of said that this is not protected speech because a reasonable person would feel threatened and coerced by the words about Zionists, and that kind of speech is not protected by the First Amendment.
The mindless mob on a NYC subway car: “Raise your hands if you’re a Zionist. This is your chance to get out.”
Here’s another instance of a teachers’ union imposing its political values on students. And course it comes from Portland, Oregon. You have to remember that teachers’ unions don’t exist for the benefit of the students, but for the teachers themselves. As the Daily Signal reported in 2011:
As former American Federation of Teachers president Al Shanker infamously quipped: “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.”
And here we have a paradigmatic case of where interests of teachers and students don’t coincide, or rather, when teachers appear so “progressive” that their unions urge teachers to propagandize students in favor of Palestine. The two articles below documenting this are both conservative—the National Review and The City Journal—but just check the sources and judge for yourself. Christopher Rufo, for example, is widely demonized, but mainly because he’s a Republican who advised Ron DeSantis. In fact, I think his exposing DEI stuff and showing its weaknesses have been salubrious. And so is this exposé. But again, read and judge.
I have to emphasize that these are lesson plans made by the Portland Association of Teachers, and it’s not clear whether any of this material has yet been foisted on students.
Click on the two headlines below to read, or check out this series of tweets by Rufo documenting the teaching material.
From the National Review, by Ryan Mills:
And the City Journal piece by Rufo:
From the National Review Piece:
Jewish leaders and concerned parents in Portland, Oregon are accusing the local teachers’ union of indoctrinating students with anti-Israel messages and engaging in one-sided, pro-Palestinian activism as the war in Gaza continues to rage.
The 32-page guide, “Know Your Rights! Teaching & Organizing for Palestine within Portland Public Schools,” was published last month by the Oregon Educators for Palestine in collaboration with the teachers’ union. It offers legal advice to educators “teaching about the genocide in Palestine,” and advice on how to teach about the ongoing conflict.
The fact that parents and Jewish leaders say that the teachers’ union is actually “indoctrinating students” implies that this material is being taught, but it’s not clear. However, the guide seems to have disappeared, as the link above goes nowhere. Never mind; you can find the link below.
There’s more:
The teaching guide does not mention that Gaza is governed by Hamas, which the U.S. designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997. And critics note that while it focuses on the plight of Palestinians, it makes no mention of Hamas’ terrorist attack on October 7, which killed about 1,200 innocent people, mostly Israeli civilians, and led to the war.
The guide accuses Israel of engaging in “settler colonialism” and says that the “Zionist settler colonization of Palestine has been widely compared to settler colonialism in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and elsewhere.”
. . .For younger students, the guide recommends lessons, books, and videos from various far-left education outfits, including Woke Kindergarten, the Palestinian Feminist Collective, and Social Justice Books. It includes a visual guide titled “So You Made it to a Protest!” and “Lil Comrade Convos,” which urges young kids to discuss “power.”
Older students are directed to lessons on “Renewable Energy in occupied Palestine,” “Unions,” “Genocide of Palestinians,” “Queer Voices From the Fight For Palestine Liberation,” and “No Freedom Without Reproductive Freedom for Palestinian Women.”
What can you say except “Oy vey!” (if you’re a Zionist). But Rufo has more evidence in a working link and some tweets, so I’ll quote the second article as well. And the link in the first sentence, to the “Teach Palestine” resources, is working, though I don’t see how to download it.
I have obtained a collection of publicly accessible documents produced by the Portland Association of Teachers, an affiliate of the state teachers’ union that encourages its more than 4,500 members to “Teach Palestine!” (The union did not respond to a request for comment.)
The lesson plans are steeped in radicalism, and they begin teaching the principles of “decolonization” to students as young as four and five years old. For prekindergarten kids, the union promotes a workbook from the Palestinian Feminist Collective, which tells the story of a fictional Palestinian boy named Handala. “When I was only ten years old, I had to flee my home in Palestine,” the boy tells readers. “A group of bullies called Zionists wanted our land so they stole it by force and hurt many people.” Students are encouraged to come up with a slogan that they can chant at a protest and complete a maze so that Handala can “get back home to Palestine”—represented as a map of Israel.
Other pre-K resources include a video that repeats left-wing mantras, including “I feel safe when there are no police,” and a slideshow that glorifies the Palestinian intifada, or violent resistance against Israel. The recommended resource list also includes a “sensory guide for kids” on attending protests. It teaches children what they might see, hear, taste, touch, and smell at protests, and promotes photographs of slogans such as “Abolish Prisons” and “From the River to the Sea.”
In kindergarten through second grade, the ideologies intensify. The teachers’ union recommends a lesson, “Art and Action for Palestine,” that teaches students that Israel, like America, is an oppressor. The objective is to “connect histories of settler colonialism from Palestine to the United States” and to “celebrate Palestinian culture and resistance throughout history and in the present, with a focus on Palestinian children’s resistance.”
The lesson suggests that teachers should gather the kindergarteners into a circle and teach them a history of Palestine: “75 years ago, a lot of decision makers around the world decided to take away Palestinian land to make a country called Israel. Israel would be a country where rules were mostly fair for Jewish people with White skin,” the lesson reads. “There’s a BIG word for when Indigenous land gets taken away to make a country, that’s called settler colonialism.”
Before snack time, the teacher is encouraged to share “keffiyehs, flags, and protest signs” with the children, and have them create their own agitprop material, with slogans such as “FREE PALESTINE, LET GAZA LIVE, [and] PALESTINE WILL BE FREE.” The intention, according to the lesson, is to move students toward “taking collective action in support of Palestinian liberation.”
I can’t stop quoting!
. . . .The recommended curriculum also includes a pamphlet titled “All Out for Palestine.” The pamphlet is explicitly political, with a sub-headline blaring in all capital letters: “STOP THE GENOCIDE! END U.S. AID TO IRSAEL! [sic] FREE PALESTINE!” The authors denounce “Zionism’s long genocidal war on Palestinian life” and encourage students to support “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” policies against Israel.
You can peruse the teaching guide, and I’ll put up a few tweets by Rufo demonstrating what’s in it. It starts with lessons from kindergarten through grade 2 (roughly ages 5-7).
In pre-kindergarten, teachers are encouraged to read from a workbook by the Palestinian Feminist Collective, which blames “a group of bullies called Zionists” who “stole [Palestinian] land by force and hurt many people.” pic.twitter.com/7tpUtzgJLT
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 5, 2024
Before snack time, the teacher is encouraged to share “keffiyehs, flags, and protest signs” with the children, and have them create their own agitprop material, with slogans such as “FREE PALESTINE, LET GAZA LIVE, [and] PALESTINE WILL BE FREE.” pic.twitter.com/8kuTTJnlVY
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 5, 2024
Finally, the hardcore ideology. The curriculum encourages students to chant in support of Palestinian martyrs and suggests that violence against Israel is justified: “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!” “We salute all our martyrs!”; “No peace on stolen land!” pic.twitter.com/Y0am6SRNco
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 5, 2024
Here’s one I found from high school plans; click to read the whole lesson plan:
What the hell is going on here? This is blatant political propagandizing of the type that UNRWA foists on kids in Gaza, but it’s in AMERICA. Of course whether you consider Portland “America” is a matter of taste these days, but I don’t think any parent save someone blatantly pro-Hamas would want their kids fed one-sided propaganda these days. Particularly Jewish parents!
All I can say is that the parents of Portland should nip this nonsense in the bud, pronto.
Teachers’ unions of course have often taken stands inimical to the well-being of their charges: they are notoriously loath to fire teachers who are incompetent or even drunk, they are often pro-DEI, and they pushed schools to close down during the pandemic, a move that now, I think, is seen as deeply unwise, having set children’s education back by a long spell without really conferring much benefit to health. And this post is one more example of how a teachers’ union, apparently besotted by Palestine and rife with anti-Zionism, is not teaching but propagandizing.
