Category: colleges and universities

Students Supporting Israel is the only group that Vanderbilt rejects among 11 applicants for its Multicultural Leadership Council

April 16, 2024 • 11:30 am

What a life! First I defend the speech rights of pro-Palestinian student who may well favor the elimination of Israel, and now I’m back again at Vanderbilt University, where, according to both the student newspaper and the Jewish paper The Algemeiner, students have rejected precisely one out of 11 student groups that applied to joint the school’s Multicultural Leadership Council (MLC): Students Supporting Israel. Wouldn’t you know it!? (One other group, Vanderbilt United Mission for Relief and Development, is awaiting a vote.)

There are two articles that say largely the same thing, so I’ll quote from the shorter Algemeiner piece.  But let us not forget that Vanderbilt become an “Our Hero” school when its Chancellor, Daniel Diermeier (Chicago’s former Provost) had students removed and arrested after occupying the administration building for nearly a whole day, protesting Vandy’s supposed complicity in supporting Israel against Gaza. Many of the students were also given interim suspensions, and there’s no sign that those suspensions will be lifted.  It was not free speech that Diermeier was opposing, for he’s a big advocate of such speech (after all, he’s from the University of Chicago). He was enforcing “time and place” regulations for protest, and it’s simply against Vandy’s rules to sit inside the administration building.

According to these two articles, the rejection of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) was a decision of Vanderbilt students, not the administration, and I guess they just don’t like Israel. After all, Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, both hate-filled groups favoring the elimination of Israel, are already members of the MLC (so is a subgroup from Hillel, but I bet it’s been a member forever).

Click below to see the piece from the Vanderbilt Hustler, the student newspaper:


Click below to go to the Algemeiner piece:

I’ll quote from The Algemeiner, but you can check the other piece, too:

According to The Vanderbilt Hustler, [Students Supporting Israel] is the only one to be rejected from this year’s applicant pool, an outcome that SSI president Ryan Bauman said is evidence of febrile opposition to dialogue and coexistence among some segments of the student body. The only Jewish group to be admitted, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), is a fringe anti-Israel organization that did not condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel and has long celebrated terrorism against Israelis.

Among the nine groups to be admitted to the MLC this year were the Taiwanese American Student Association, Vanderbilt Pride Serve, the Vanderbilt Association for South Asian Cuisine, and the Vanderbilt Iranian Student Association. One of the 11 total organizations that applied, Vanderbilt United Mission for Relief and Development, is still awaiting an upcoming vote.

As a requirement of its application, SSI was told to deliver a presentation to the MLC but given only a few minutes to do so. Afterward, the group was cross-examined by the MLC — of which Students for Justice in Palestine is a member organization — about their opinions regarding “genocide” and “apartheid,” an apparent attempt to use the proceeding as a soapbox for anti-Zionist propaganda.

“We told them that we didn’t show up to discuss politics,” Bauman told The Algemeiner during an interview on Tuesday. “We told them we were there to celebrate Israeli culture and further the pro-Israel movement and invited them to have other dialogues at another time. We were then told to leave, and they held a closed session. And as you can see, it resulted in us being rejected by a wide margin.”

Is there any reason besides antisemitism or anti-Zionism that SSI would be the only group to be rejected? If you know Jewish Voice for Peace and especially Students for Justice in Palestine, you’ll know that they’re to a large extent hate groups who favor the abolition of Israel (SJP also celebrated Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel). Is it too much to ask for a group supporting Israel to be added to the mix? Apparently so.

One more note from The Algemeiner:

This is not the first time that Students Supporting Israel has been denied membership in a student organization. In 2021, the president of Duke University’s Student Government vetoed a vote approving recognition of SSI, an incident which set off volleys of criticism and a sharp rebuke from the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.

“Grant them the same access,” Brandeis Center president Alyza Lewin said at the time, warning of potential civil rights violations. “Treat them no differently than any other student recognized organization. If the university chooses not to intervene and does not make sure that SSI gets equal access and it is understood to be no different than any other organization, there could be potential legal liability for the university.”

That also holds for Vanderbilt, whose reputation for fairness could be besmirched by this act. As I said, I don’t blame the administration, which has been exemplary. Chancellor Diermeier also adopted the position of institutional neutrality as embodied in The University of Chicago’s Kalven report, making Vanderbilt one of only a handful of schools to take this essential position. Pity his efforts are being tarred by a bunch of hypocritical students.

USC forbids its hijab-clad valedictorian to speak at graduation because she minored in genocide

April 16, 2024 • 9:20 am

This is a true test of people like me who are pro-Israel in the current conflict but are also in favor of free speech. But it’s not a hard decision, for if you’re a hard line free-speech advocate, you must accept the fact that it’s most important to allow freedom of speech when what the person says offends you or many others.

And that is the situation in the case of Asna Tabassum, the valedictorian of the University of Southern California (USC), who, apparently because she might talk about (Israeli) genocide or advocate for a Palestine “from the river to the sea”, isn’t going to be allowed to speak at graduation. (Of course, the USC administration uses other excuses for censorship, like “safety”.)

I was alerted to the situation by this tweet sent to me by Luana:

Is this the case? Does USC really have a minor in genocide? Did the valedictorian minor in genocide?  And did USC also prevent its valedictorian from speaking because of the possibility she might discuss genocide? The answer to all four questions appears to be “yes”. But I think it’s wrong to prevent her from speaking—not if USC has a tradition of having valedictorians speak, which there is.

First, yes, USC does have a minor in genocide, or rather “resistance to genocide”. Here are part of the details of that minor (click to read), but if you look at the the courses, there’s nothing about Israel/Palestine: most of them are about the Shoah (Holocaust of Jews during WWII), Native American genocide, the Armenian genocide, and genocide and the law. It seems like a creditable minor.  Of course one suspects that Tabassum might have minored in this because of a belief that Palestine is undergoing genocide, but we don’t know that, and at any rate it’s irrelevant to this kerfuffle.

This article from the school’s site USC Today (click headline below to read) confirms that Tabassum was indeed the valedictorian:

USC’s 2024 valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, was also recognized. Tabassum, who is graduating with a major in biomedical engineering a minor in resistance to genocide, has studied how technology, immigration and literacy affect the type of medical care people receive. She has also been an advocate for the community through her service with the Muslim Student Union and the Mobile Clinic at USC.

 

And here are two articles, the first from the Los Angeles Times and the second from USC Annenberg Media, both confirming that Tabassum has indeed been banned buy USC’s administration from speaking. Click both to read, though the quotes below come from the L.A. Times.

From the L.A. Times:

And from the USC Annenberg site:

Quotes from the LA Times:

Saying “tradition must give way to safety,” the University of Southern California on Monday made the unprecedented move of barring an undergraduate valedictorian who has come under fire for her pro-Palestinian views from giving a speech at its May graduation ceremony.

The move, according to USC officials, is the first time the university has banned a valedictorian from the traditional chance to speak onstage at the annual commencement ceremony, which typically draws more than 65,000 people to the Los Angeles campus.

In a campuswide letter, USC Provost Andrew T. Guzman cited unnamed threats that have poured in shortly after the university publicized the valedictorian’s name and biography this month. Guzman said attacks against the student for her pro-Palestinian views have reached an “alarming tenor” and “escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement.”

. . .“After careful consideration, we have decided that our student valedictorian will not deliver a speech at commencement. … There is no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement. The issue here is how best to maintain campus security and safety, period,” Guzman wrote.

The student, whom the letter does not name, is biomedical engineering major Asna Tabassum. USC officials chose Tabassum from nearly 100 student applicants who had GPAs of 3.98 or higher.

But after USC President Carol Folt announced her selection, a swarm of on- and off-campus groups attacked Tabassum. They targeted her minor, resistance to genocide, as well as her pro-Palestinian views and “likes” expressed through her Instagram account.

Here’s an Instagram post quoting Tabassum and calling for her deplatforming. Her own Instagram site is now private, but note that the words are probably not hers, but from a link in her own Instagram biography.

And even if the words quoted above were hers, do they promote imminent violence (presumably towards Jews)? Nope. It’s not a First-Amendment exception to call Zionism a “racist settler-colonial ideology, nor to call for the complete abolition of Israel. If it were, half of Twitter would be taken down.

As expected, Tabassum didn’t like this decision, and issued a mature but passionate statement:

In a statement, Tabassum opposed the decision, saying USC has “abandoned” her.

“Although this should have been a time of celebration for my family, friends, professors, and classmates, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian voices have subjected me to a campaign of racist hatred because of my uncompromising belief in human rights for all,” said Tabassum, who is Muslim.

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“This campaign to prevent me from addressing my peers at commencement has evidently accomplished its goal: today, USC administrators informed me that the university will no longer allow me to speak at commencement due to supposed security concerns,” she wrote.

“I am both shocked by this decision and profoundly disappointed that the university is succumbing to a campaign of hate meant to silence my voice. I am not surprised by those who attempt to propagate hatred. I am surprised that my own university—my home for four years—has abandoned me.”

And of course the university issued a weaselly decision:

In an interview, Guzman said the university has been “in close contact with the student” and would “provide her support.” He added that “we weren’t seeking her opinion” on the ban.

“This is a security decision,” he said. “This is not about the identity of the speaker, it’s not about the things the valedictorian has said in the past. We have to put as our top priority ensuring that the campus and community is safe.”

A screenshot from Provost Andrew Guzman, who singlehandedly decided to ban Tabassum (he doesn’t even have the guts to name her in the letter):

Some of those who objected were, of course, Jewish groups:

We Are Tov, a group that uses the Hebrew word for “good” and describes itself as “dedicated to combating antisemitism,” posted Tabassum’s image on its Instagram account and said she “openly promotes antisemitic writings.” The group also criticized Tabassum for liking Instagram posts from “Trojans for Palestine.” Tabassum’s Instagram bio links to a landing page that says “learn about what’s happening in Palestine, and how to help.”

The campus group Trojans for Israel also posted on its Instagram account, calling for Folt’s “reconsideration” of Tabassum for what it described as her “antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric.” The group said Tabassum’s Instagram bio linked to a page that called Zionism a “racist settler-colonial ideology.”

Well, I have little doubt, based on the above, that Tabassum is pro-Palestinian, may feel that Israel is committing genocide, and has made social-media posts that may smack of antisemitism and perhaps a desire to eliminate Israel.  But none of that is relevant here. The only consideration is whether Tabassum’s words are calculated and intended to promote imminent and lawless violence—something that would violate her First-Amendment freedom to speak. And, as a private university, USC doesn’t need to adhere to the First Amendment. They could ban Tabassum without citing freedom of speech. But, like any decent university, public or private, USC should follow the First Amendment. The only exception is that universities should allow “time, place, and manner” expressions of speech that don’t disturb the mission of the university. That means no disrupting speeches or blocking access to university facilities like classes.

Further, USC promotes First-Amendment-like freedom of speech on their website.  Here’s one bit from USC’s Policy on Free Speech:

As the Faculty Handbook declares, the University recognizes that students are exposed to thought-provoking ideas as part of their educational experience, and some of these ideas may challenge their beliefs and may lead a student to claim that an educational experience is offensive.  Therefore any such issues that arise in the educational context will be considered in keeping with the University’s commitment to academic freedom.

Except, of course, when the issue arises in a graduation speech!

Yes, there may have been threats, but it’s up to USC to have enough security on hand to both protect Ms. Tabassum and also allow her to speak without heckling. The mere citation of threats and palaver about “security decisions” is simply a way that USC can ban a controversial speaker without having to provide the conditions where and when she can speak freely.

Tabassum is a valedictorian, valedictorians traditionally speak at USC, and her speech is almost certainly not designed to incite imminent lawless violence. Even if she accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, that is not sufficient grounds to ban her. (If USC is worried about First-Amendment exceptions, they can vet her speech in advance, but they better have constitutional lawyers look at it, too!).

In my view, USC is cowardly and censorious in preventing Tabassum from speaking at graduation.  The school is, as she notes, robbing her of her big moment: her reward for working hard over four years to become the best student in her class. I urge USC to change their minds and let her speak, but of course it’s too late.  The gutless wonders, fond of selective censorship, appear to be running USC. And the great irony here is that although the school offers a minor in genocide, it prevents someone from speaking because they might bring up the subject.

_______________

Full disclosure: I was the valedictorian in my college class, too, and was also prevented from the traditional (short) speech because the administration knew I was an antiwar activist. Thus they announced my award from the stage while I was in the audience. I got to stand up when I was recognized, but I was wearing a black armband and made the “Black Power” fist salute. (That cost me a summer job.)  I, too, felt a bit cheated, and for reasons similar to those of Tabassum. But I think that  the censorship of Tabassum is a much bigger deal than mine given that she was supposed to make a full speech and not just an elongated “thank you”. And, of course, free speech is especially important to emphasize these days.  Too many schools are using “safetyism” as a reason to cancel speakers, which merely empowers those who are encouraged to give the “heckler’s veto” and make threats. If a speaker isn’t going to violate the First Amendment, it’s up to the university to protect her and remove those who try to shout her down.

h/t: Luana Maroja

Harvard reinstates mandatory standardized tests

April 12, 2024 • 9:15 am

Although the elimination of SATs or other standardized tests during the Pandemic Era (or giving students the option of submitting them) was justified by various excuses about viruses and so on, in most cases the real reason was to create equity.  Especially when it became clear that the Supreme Court would declare race-based admission illegal, colleges eliminated standardized tests as a way to achieve racial equity, assuming that the lower average scores of minorities would translate into lower admissions.  And yet several studies have shown that standardized tests are the best predictor of college grades (“success”).

But it didn’t quite work that way. At least under the “test optional” criterion, a study by Dartmouth College showed that the “optional” criterion used by many schools had the effect of harming admissions prospects of lower-income students, since they often thought, mistakenly, that their test scores would hurt them. Here’s a bit from a NYT article by David Leonhardt that I wrote about in February:

Last summer, Sian Beilock — a cognitive scientist who had previously run Barnard College in New York — became the president of Dartmouth. After arriving, she asked a few Dartmouth professors to do an internal study on standardized tests. Like many other colleges during the Covid pandemic, Dartmouth dropped its requirement that applicants submit an SAT or ACT score. [JAC: Four-part ACTs are alternatives to SATs.] With the pandemic over and students again able to take the tests, Dartmouth’s admissions team was thinking about reinstating the requirement. Beilock wanted to know what the evidence showed.

“Our business is looking at data and research and understanding the implications it has,” she told me.

Three Dartmouth economists and a sociologist then dug into the numbers. One of their main findings did not surprise them: Test scores were a better predictor than high school grades — or student essays and teacher recommendations — of how well students would fare at Dartmouth. The evidence of this relationship is large and growing, as I explained in a recent Times article.

A second finding was more surprising. During the pandemic, Dartmouth switched to a test-optional policy, in which applicants could choose whether to submit their SAT and ACT scores. And this policy was harming lower-income applicants in a specific way.

The researchers were able to analyze the test scores even of students who had not submitted them to Dartmouth. (Colleges can see the scores after the admissions process is finished.) Many lower-income students, it turned out, had made a strategic mistake.

They withheld test scores that would have helped them get into Dartmouth. They wrongly believed that their scores were too low, when in truth the admissions office would have judged the scores to be a sign that students had overcome a difficult environment and could thrive at Dartmouth.

After this study, Dartmouth reinstated the SAT test as a mandatory requirement for applicants,

Now Harvard University (which as students we called “Schmarvard”), has also reinstated mandatory standardized tests as part of the admissions process.  Click to read:

This is from the April 11 Harvard Magazine:

Harvard announced today that the College will reinstitute mandatory submission of standardized test scores for applicants, beginning with students applying for fall 2025 admission (the class of 2029). Until today’s decision, the College had a test-optional policy in place for applicants through the class of 2030. The announcement follows similar decisions by Dartmouth, Yale, and Brown to require standardized testing beginning with the class of 2029.

Test-optional policies were widely adopted during the pandemic, when it was difficult to sit for standardized tests, and many remained in place even as the threat of illness faded. The tests were thought to disadvantage lower-income students and those from under-resourced high schools. But a working paper coauthored in 2023 by Ackman professor of public economics Raj Chetty, Black professor of political economy and professor of education and economics David Deming, and John Friedman, a professor of economics at Brown, found standardized tests are a useful means of identifying promising students at less well-resourced high schools. In a statement, Chetty said “Critics correctly note that standardized tests are not an unbiased measure of students’ qualifications, as students from higher-income families often have greater access to test prep and other resources. But the data reveal that other measures—recommendation letters, extracurriculars, essays—are even more prone to such biases. Considering standardized test scores is likely to make the admissions process at Harvard more meritocratic while increasing socioeconomic diversity.”

As previously reported, MIT, which reinstituted a testing requirement last year—citing SAT math scores as measures of an applicant’s ability to handle a highly quantitative curriculum—recently reported enrolling its most diverse class. (In late March, Emi Nietfeld’15 hadargued in favor of mandatory standardized testing from the perspective of a disadvantaged applicant in this New York Times essay, “How the SAT Changed My Life.”)

In today’s announcement, Harvard said it will require submission of SAT or ACT scores, but that other eligible tests, such as AP exams and International Baccalaureate scores, will be accepted in exceptional cases.

The Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science parroted the Dartmouth finding:

“Standardized tests are a means for all students, regardless of their background and life experience, to provide information that is predictive of success in college and beyond” said Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi Hoekstra in an email to students and colleagues. “Indeed, when students have the option of not submitting their test scores, they may choose to withhold information that, when interpreted by the admissions committee in the context of the local norms of their school, could have potentially helped their application. In short,” she continued, “more information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range.”

It’s about time. And notice that what’s mentioned is “across the socioeconomic range” rather than “across the ethnic range.”  I don’t know if “socioeconomic” is the new code word for “race,” but the mandatory submission of test scores can only be a good thing. How can it hurt? It’s a way of identifying talent that isn’t revealed by high-school grades or where someone went to high school, and if a college wants to admit students on the basis of either merit or likelihood of success (they’re correlated), the make the tests obligatory.

UCLA goes bonkers, hires unhinged “activist in residence” to give a lecture mandatory for all entering med-school students, who are forced to pray for “mama Earth” and chant pro-Palestinian slogans

April 11, 2024 • 9:30 am

The last time I posted something about an article by Georgetown University Law Professor Jonathan Turley, I believe someone beefed because Turley was a conservative, implying that his articles couldn’t be trusted. Well, I deplore the attitude that you can judge the veracity of claims using the ideology, race, or gender of someone who reports them: all you have to do is check the facts!  And it turns out that the startling and disturbing facts adduced in this new piece by Turley on his website check out (remember, most articles give links).

And yes, it’s true that UCLA has an “Activist-in-Residence” program, blending ideology with scholarship, and that first year medical students at UCLA were forced to listen to a lecture given by an apparently bonkers pro-Palestinian woman described as a “formerly incarcerated and unhoused poverty scholar” who made the students chant for Palestine as well as to pray to “mama Earth.”

Read and weep by clicking the headline:

This is unbelievable, except, as far as I can determine, it checks out. Excerpts from Turley are indented:

There has been much discussion about the controversial mandatory lecture for first-year medical students at the University of California Los Angeles from a pro-Palestinian speaker accused of anti-Semitic postings and racist rhetoric. However, there is less attention to the fact that Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia was appearing because she is one of UCLA’s paid Activists-in-Residence.

Gray-Garica is described by UCLA as “a formerly unhoused and incarcerated poverty scholar who prefers to keep their face covered in public.”

. . . In her two-hour lecture, Gray-Garcia dismissed modern medicine as “white science” and told the medical students to engage in a prayer to “mama Earth.” Students were expected to pray and affirm that “Mama Earth was never meant to be bought, sold, pimped or played.”

It was part of what was billed as a talk on “Housing (In)justice in LA: Addressing Unhousing and Practicing Solidarity.”

A complaint filed after the lecture [JAC: see below] alleges that students were expected to chant “Free, free Palestine” and when one student refused to stand during one prayer, an unidentified UCLA faculty member asked for the pupil’s name. The complaint alleges that students were concerned that they would face repercussions if they did not chant and pray on command.

In the lecture, posted online, Gray-Garcia keeps her face covered with a keffiyeh while veering off into a diatribe over the Gaza Strip.  She also attacked the concept and defense of private property as “crapitalist lies” that kill “black, brown and houseless people.”

First, let’s check out Tiny Gray-Garcia. You can see her views on her public Facebook page, with this header:

A few pictures, with and without keffiyeh or face covering.  If you browse, you’ll find that it’s all-Palestine all the time

And Mama Earth, too! This looks like the garb she lectured in, as you can see in the short clip below:

But she isn’t always covered; she appears to be the woman in the middle (from her Facebook page):

Here she is on the latest Activist-in-Residence page, face not visible.  I wonder if there were ever any conservative or even centrist “activists” included in this program.

Here’s the page showing UCLA’s Activist-in-Residence program,  As they say, the purpose of that program is to disrupt the university and effect Social Justice:

It is our objective to “turn the university inside out” and invite artists, community organizers, and movement leaders to undertake power-shifting scholarship and pedagogy focused on social change. This program provides opportunities for activists to engage with the UCLA community to develop and strengthen their capabilities, work, and commitment towards social, racial, spatial, and gender justice.

This is explicitly ideological and would certainly not be permitted at the University of Chicago. Yet UCLA is a public university, and I wonder if the program is being funded by the taxpayers of California.

Now some of the projects sound like really good ones, but you’d be hard pressed to argue that social-justice change, all in a “progressive” direction, is part of the mission of a university, especially a public one. Below is UCLA’s official profile of Tiny as a “Poverty Skola” on the page (click to enlarge), further described as a “formerly unhoused, incarcerated poverty scholar”. (“Formerly unhoused” is progressive Newspeak for “was once homeless”, and of course you know what “incarcerated” means. Her crime is not given, though, in the ten-minute video below; she says it was a “poverty crime”.)

Gray-Garcia’s UCLA lecture online at the link is an excerpt only only 100 seconds long, not the two full hours that Turley implies, but in this Tik Tok clip you can see a weirdly garbed Gray-Garcia walking around haranguing the students with wacko ideology:

@povertyskola

Excerpt of “The myth of Clean and the unhoused body on stolen land -presented by povertyskolaz at #Poormagazine #AetnaStreet #KripHopNation at #uclamedschool #Povertyscholarship #Homefulness #Prop1 #4118 @The Black Kripple @Poor People’s Army @Delphine Brody

♬ original sound – PovertySkola

Here’s Tiny giving a ten-minute talk online, coming off as an activist but also unhinged. What I wonder is what this person has to contribute to the education of medical students.   It’s hard to see why on earth an anti-Semitic Marxist should be selected to give a lecture that must be heard by first-year medical students. Is this the best that UCLA can do? But of course her presentation simply reflects the indoctrination that UCLA’s activists, and at the medical school, want to give their students.  There is, of course, no counterspeech, only that one student who refused to pray to “mama Earth”.

More from Turley:

Gray-Garcia was undeterred by the complaint or the criticism, posting on X the next day: “As we hold our relatives in Occupied Palestine, and all of Mama Earth in prayer and love, we need to make connections.”

Here’s the tweet. Gray-Garcia repeatedly analogizes, throughout her discourse, gentrified American areas with Israeli “colonialism”. She also accuses Israel of “apartheid.”

More from Turley:

There have been ample objections to this indoctrination session at UCLA, but the school has been criticized for years for its viewpoint intolerance and orthodoxy.

However, what is most disturbing is the decision of the university that higher education should have paid “activists-in-residence.”  At a school notorious for excluding conservative and libertarian voices, it is doubtful that it would embrace a pro-life or anti-transgender activist in residence. Instead, the faculty can enlist the support of activists to push an ideological agenda in mandatory sessions like this one.

UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy has gushed with praise for Gray-Garcia’s “rousing remarks presented in the form of spoken word poetry.”

UCLA Luskin Professor Ananya Roy, who created the residency program, heralded how the activists-in-residence is part of “our effort to turn the university inside out.” Roy added that “at the Institute, we organize knowledge within, against and beyond the university. The Activist-in-Residence program brings to the university the movement scholars and public intellectuals who are teachers and guides for this praxis.”

The faculty, including Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris who is the Interim Dean of the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA, obviously support this view of higher education.

The question is why taxpayers and donors should support such school-sponsored activism. I previously wrote about the “radical chic” of academia as well as the new focus on “activism” as a field of study.

In fact, Turley says he encourages his students to be activists. But we shouldn’t tell them HOW to be activists, which is exactly what UCLA Medical School is doing by giving Tiny, with known views, a platform. Will they give someone like Turley, or even a centrist, a plaform for a mandatory med-school lecture? Given the way med schools are going, I wouldn’t count on it!

Many of us encourage political activism and engagement of our students. They need to bring their passion and voices to the debates today over issues ranging from abortion to the environment to wars.

We have long benefited from intellectual activists in our country, but they were intellectuals first and activists second. They were thought-leaders who used classic education to advance societal change.

Gray-Garcia embodies how academics are destroying the very intellectual foundation for higher education. Incorporating such “activists-in-residence” are extremely popular moves for faculty at schools like UCLA. However, they are hijacking higher education for their own political and professional purposes. The problem is that few have the courage to oppose such programs out of fear that they will be the next to be targeted in a cancel campaign or university investigation. Most remain in cringing silence as bizarre scenes like the one at UCLA play out on campus.

The one UCLA student who refused to pray on command was a courageous exception. However, we should all pray for the future of American higher education if Gray-Garcia is the measure of American intellectual thought.

You can find the complaint about Tiny’s lecture by UCLA’s Jewish Faculty Resilience Group here. The closing statement from that letter:

Luana Maroja fights a proposal to eliminate grades for first-semester students at Williams College

April 10, 2024 • 9:45 am

My partner in crime, biologist Luana Maroja at prestigious Williams College, is once again making heterodox statements that will peeve a number of students—and perhaps faculty. But she is brave.

In this case, some Williams students got the bright idea last winter that the College should do away with all grades for first-semester students because those students want to play and socialize without any “pressure”. Further, the stress of getting grades could supposedly damage their mental health.

But of course one of the motivations (see below) also seems to be achieving “equity”—a motivation designed to cast opponents of the suggestion as bigots or racists. The “equity excuse” has been made by a number of colleges to not only eliminate grades for incoming students, but also to omit standardized tests like the SAT as requirements for applying to college. In its place some schools have installed “holistic admissions”, a way to get around the Supreme Court ruling that colleges cannot use race-based admissions.  In fact, required standardized tests seem have the effect of boosting minority achievement, by highlighting those students who do particularly well in comparison with others.

It appears, and this is not rocket science, that most student groups at Williams are in favor of the proposal. They don’t really want to bust their hump first semester; they want to play and hang out. Luana, of course, thinks this is slacking off, as you can see from her letter, which was published this morning in The Williams Record (the student newspaper). I agree because I’m an old-school professor, but Luana is young. It appeared today because the faculty will be discussing the propsal this afternoon.

Click below to read it:


I’ll quote the first four paragraphs of the letter, but the whole letter is about three times longer:

This winter, the student members of the Committee on Educational Affairs (CEA) brought an argument that the College should adopt a mandatory Credit/No Credit (C/NC) grading policy for students in their first semester at the College. On April 3, faculty were informed about this argument, which will be a topic of discussion at the faculty meeting this afternoon.

This suggestion was based on similar policies at peer institutions, like Swarthmore, MIT, and Wellesley, where first-year students still receive letter grades on all course components, but receive “credit” or “no credit” designations on their official transcripts (i.e. shadow grading). The argument claims that grade-induced academic expectations are stressful and that students’ mental health and social relationships will improve under a C/NC system while keeping students’ long-term academic performance intact. 

What proponents of the argument fail to realize is that adopting the policy could, in fact, result in significant academic harm, especially for students who do not come from elite academic backgrounds. Although there will not be a motion to adopt the policy at this afternoon’s meeting — the CEA brought this topic to the general faculty for discussion to build consensus on the “underlying value of the goals” — I think it is important to share my opinion here, because many students are not familiar with this argument and many professors who share my feelings are afraid to voice opposition due to the framing’s focus on mental health, grades, and minorities.

The argument claims that grades given in the first semester harm various marginalized groups. It asserts that “isolation, stress and a myopic focus on academics … are differentially demanding for marginalized students, whether based on their racial identity, class, sexual orientation or any otherness.” While I appreciate the empathy for marginalized groups, this framing stifles debate. Because the argument is framed as “reducing harm towards minorities,” professors and students opposed to the argument will be afraid of voicing concerns or offering arguments against it lest they be perceived as callous or bigoted. 

As Luana points out later, she herself, as a Brazilian student entering an American graduate school (Cornell), and coming from a dysfunctional educational system, well knows motivating value of assessing merit. You can’t do that with a pass/no pass system.

Facing accusations of antisemitism, Harvard adds a “Jewish graduation” to its panoply of identity-group ceremonies

April 6, 2024 • 9:30 am

Yes, I know that Harvard University has one big graduation for all undergraduates and grad students (I went to it when I got my Ph.D. in 1978; Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave the commencement address in a famous speech that called out the West for its “spiritual degeneration”).  At that time, there was but one “identity” ceremony that included everyone. E pluribus unum!  (One small exception: people who got their Ph.D.’s in different fields had separate degree-granting ceremonies.)

I’m not sure when this changed, but now Harvard has many different graduation ceremonies for different identity groups. And, of course, they are organized by the DEI office. Here’s this year’s panoply of “identity ceremonies” listed by the conservative National Review:

Harvard University’s Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging will once again host “affinity celebrations” at its 2024 commencement, according to documents obtained by National Review.

Harvard plans to hold a “Disability Celebration,” a “Global Indigenous Celebration,” an “Asian American, Pacific Islander, Desi-American (APIDA) Celebration,” a “First Generation-Low Income Celebration,” a “Jewish Celebration,” a “Latinx Celebration,” a “Lavender Celebration” — which refers to LGBT students — a “Black Celebration,” a “Veterans Celebration,” and an “Arab Celebration.” The university will also hold a central commencement ceremony for students of all backgrounds.

. . . . The only publicly available mention of affinity celebrations on any Harvard website is published on the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ page. The note does not mention the specific events or groups recognized, simply describing them as “student-led, staff-supported events that recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of graduates from marginalized and underrepresented communities.”

“Desi-American” means people whose ancestry is Pacific Islander, Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani or other Asians, identity groups that may not be so fond of each other! Is there any oppressed group missing here? The “First Generation-Low Income Celebration” puzzles me, as the two features don’t necessarily go together, and of course immediately upon leaving the ceremony the graduates have abandoned that identity.

There was one notable group missing at Harvard last year, and you can guess which one it was. That’s right—the Jews!  But now, facing a federal Title VI civil rights investigation for a campus climate of antisemitism, and the fracas around the “Jewish genocide” hearing in Congress that in the end brought down Harvard and Penn’s Presidents, the school decided it had better do something to effect some climate change, though not in the way that the antisemitic Greta Thunberg would favor.

Frankly, I think these separate graduations are ludicrous and, in the end, purely performative. Do they move society forward? No.  Are they divisive? Probably, in that they continue the obsessive academic focus on identity.  “Identity politics” isn’t inherently bad—after all, it was the impetus behind the Civil Rights Movement of the Sixties. But these days, fostered and promoted by DEI offices, it has gone way too far, making someone’s identity, based on features they can’t control, the most important aspect of their persona. This is why Steve Pinker, who’s at Harvard and laid out in the Boston Globe a five-point plan for fixing Harvard that includes this recommendation:

Disempowering DEI. Many of the assaults on academic freedom (not to mention common sense) come from a burgeoning bureaucracy that calls itself diversity, equity, and inclusion while enforcing a uniformity of opinion, a hierarchy of victim groups, and the exclusion of freethinkers. Often hastily appointed by deans as expiation for some gaffe or outrage, these officers stealthily implement policies that were never approved in faculty deliberations or by university leaders willing to take responsibility for them.

An infamous example is the freshman training sessions that terrify students with warnings of all the ways they can be racist (such as asking, “Where are you from?”). Another is the mandatory diversity statements for job applicants, which purge the next generation of scholars of anyone who isn’t a woke ideologue or a skilled liar. And since overt bigotry is in fact rare in elite universities, bureaucrats whose job depends on rooting out instances of it are incentivized to hone their Rorschach skills to discern ever-more-subtle forms of “systemic” or “implicit” bias.

Universities should stanch the flood of DEI officials, expose their policies to the light of day, and repeal the ones that cannot be publicly justified.

It is, as I said, Harvard’s DEI office that creates these identity-based graduations, reinforcing the malign atmosphere Steve describes in his first paragraph. Am I happy that Harvard, under the gun for antisemitism, now includes a Jewish ceremony? No, of course not: it’s disgusting—pandering to both Jews and DEI in general. It is, after all, DEI that, by fostering a climate that sees Jews as white oppressor colonialists, fosters antisemitism.

This conclusion isn’t rocket science. One Jewish student is quoted in the National Review about the issue:

For some, like Harvard Divinity School student Shabbos Kestenbaum — who spoke about the situation on the ground at his school during a House Education and Workforce Committee roundtable in late February — the addition of a separate celebration for Jewish students simply perpetuates the underlying dynamics driving antisemitism at Harvard.

“Rather than acknowledge the harmful ways in which Harvard DEI has contributed to campus antisemitism, the university further marginalizes individuals into groups of race, ethnicity, and religion,” Kestenbaum told National Review. “Harvard DEI is simply out of control.”

One way to stop this, as Steve suggests, is simply to disempower DEI.  Perhaps colleges can keep on staff a few individuals to whom one can bring complaints of bigotry, but there should be none of the training, propaganda, and divisivenesss that DEI sows on campus.  Even at the “free speech” University of Chicago, our climate is permeated by DEI, which sends me announcements of events on a nearly daily basis.

Walter Isaacson in trouble for pushing a heckler at Tulane

April 4, 2024 • 9:30 am

Jonathan Turley is a prominent attorney and professor of law at George Washington University Law School. He also writes a popular legal blog that often deals with free speech. His latest piece, with the headline below, deals with a question that’s occupied us quite a bit: what limitations, if any, should colleges put on freedom of speech?

I’ve been a hard-liner on this issue, insisting that colleges and universities should hew strictly to the First Amendment as interpreted by the courts, which of course means that you can pretty much say what you want unless it constitutes defamation, instigates immediate and predictable violent harm, creates harassment in the workplace, and so on.

But I have found another exception to the First Amendment for speech emitted on campus. And that is an exception widely adopted by universities, including the University of Chicago: the “time, place, and manner” exception, which, in fact, seems to be a legally recognized restriction of the First Amendment. Wikipedia characterizes it like this:

. . . . “The crucial question is whether the manner of expression is basically incompatible with the normal activity of a particular place at a particular time. . . “The [F]irst [A]mendment does not guarantee the right to communicate one’s views at all times and places or in any manner that may be desired. A state may therefore impose reasonable restrictions on the time, place or manner of constitutionally protected speech occurring in a public forum.”

At the University of Chicago we have time and place restrictions (students can’t protest in an academic building or if it disturbs classes), and there are supposed to be restrictions on manner, too. The most notable of those is the prohibition against hecklers shouting down or deplatforming speakers. This in fact is the violation we talked about Tuesday, when I reported that members of Students for Justice in Palestine had been tapped (not even slapped) on the wrist by a disciplinary committee for deplatorming (shouting down with megaphones) a demonstration by Jewish students last October. While such behavior may be legal in public parks and other such places, universities are allowed to prohibit this kind of “heckler’s veto.” After all, the purpose of a university is to teach and learn, and you don’t learn anything from a speaker if their speech cannot be heard because of hecklers. (I believe Mill mentions this in “On Liberty”.)

This brings us to Turley’s column (click headline below to read it), which recounts an incident of heckling at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

It so happens that a speaker was lecturing at Tulane in “an event to foster diversity of ideas and entrepreneurship for New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week.”  It also happens that that speaker was interrupted by—you guessed it—a speaker shouting pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli slogans (wrong time, wrong place, irrelevant speech).  And it so happens that, sitting in the audience, was a Tulane professor of national repute, Walter Isaacson, former President of CNN, and then of the Aspen Institute, and of course author of several best-sellers, including biographies of Steve Jobs and Leonardo (the latter my favorite of his works). Isaacson (a secular Jew, I think, though that doesn’t matter) decided to remove the heckler from the room by pushing them (it’s a transgender student using that pronoun) out the door. You can see it the video by clicking on the picture below, which takes you to an Instagram post. The second link in that Instagram post shows the video.

Turley gives the rest of the tale:

Isaacson, who is the Leonard Lauder Professor of American History and Values in the history department, can be shown gently moving MacDonald out of the seats. However, at the door, there appeared more of a brief scuffle at the last moment before the two went out of the frame for a split second. Isaacson is then shown returning immediately. There does not appear to be more than shoving on the video to move MacDonald out of the event.

In its Instagram post, SDS claimed that MacDonald (who identifies as a “them” as a transgender student) was injured: “Isaacson, an audience member, grabbed Rory and cursed at them, battering them and leaving them with bruises on their arms and scratches on their back.”

On local media, MacDonald is shown displaying slight scratch marks.

SDS and other groups have condemned Isaacson.

They have in fact called for Isaacson to resign.

The student shows the damage, which is light but still actionable, I think:

More from Turley:

Technically, shoving can be assault under both criminal and tort law. Certainly leaving scratch marks can qualify as evidence of assault. However, the situation is more complex than some faculty member spontaneously assaulting a student. Any removal of a disruptive protester will involve some firm handling or shoving. Indeed, when a subject resists, this can become a matter of self-defense for security as force is increased. As a subject resists, security is allowed to protect itself with a commensurate level of force.

If security can physically remove a protester (including shoving an individual from a room), the question is whether an audience member can do so. A professor has no special legal status to conduct security or exclude individuals from a public event. What is clear is that this is a function best left to university security. The problem is that security often does not enforce rules against disruptive behavior.

MacDonald was disrupting the event and Isaacson was seeking to remove him. In moving to the door, there does not appear to be anything more than firmly shoving MacDonald. In the final second, there appears to be a more forceful push in the hallway as Isaacson goes back inside. Isaacson can claim that he was protecting himself by shoving away MacDonald at that last minute. He is seen speaking to the student before firmly leading him to the door. Again, the university is investigating. There is no report of a criminal complaint.

If the university is investigating this matter, it should also address why a faculty member felt compelled to perform security at the event. We have seen universities routinely fail to expel protesters interrupting classes and events.

Universities can turn these protests into a type of “heckler’s veto” where speeches are cancelled in advance or terminated suddenly due to the disruption of protesters. The issue is not engaging in protest against such speakers, but to enter events for the purpose of preventing others from hearing such speakers. Universities create forums for the discussion of a diversity of opinions. Entering a classroom or event to prevent others from speaking is barring free speech.

There are two questions here:  did Isaacson commit assault, causing actual physical harm beyond just a threat? And, of course, where was security? Turley raises both questions, the first above and the second here:

Tulane clearly failed to protect this event and that led to this “self help” action by Isaacson. If he went too far off camera, there is also a question of why he had to act at all rather than campus security removing such disruptive protesters. This will continue until university administrators have the courage to suspend or expel students denying others the right to listen and speak at events.

But for my own school, this fracas raises a third question: what are schools going to do about this heckling, which clearly violates any free-speech regulations on campus?

Absent enforcement of school rules on such disruptions, there is little hope for the open exchange of ideas and a diversity of opinions on campus. It can unleash a type of tit-for-tat pattern of retaliation as speakers are prevented from speaking on controversial subjects. Our campuses then become little more than screaming matches. The rules of most schools properly draw the line between protests and disruptions. Everyone is allowed to be heard. However, if you enter to disrupt it, you are disrupting free speech.

In such cases, security must be either on the spot or be readily available to remove hecklers, allowing the speaker to be heard. This is exactly NOT what the University of Chicago did when SJP disrupted the Jewish speakers, who had permission to give speeches on the quad. The deans on call simply stood by and did nothing, and when asked to do something, they said they were powerless. The University cops also stood by, and said they could do nothing without the permission of the deans. (This is the same answer the cops gave me when I watched SJP and UCUP illegally blockade the administration building last fall. “We need permission from the administration to take action.” Of course no action was taken, and when I tried to call the administration, nobody answered.)  This is an embarrassment to the University, and I trust they’ll inform security and the deans on call to stop deplatforming and heckling. And I hope the administrators in charge of the deans on call don’t sit on their hands when a violation occurs..

As for Isaacson, who looked royally ticked off, I think they could file battery charges against him that would stick.  Even if he acted as “mock security,” it seems to me that what he did was illegal.  Whether he actually gets charged is another matter.  But morally he was in the right, and I applaud him.