Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

John Leo - "The Hazards of Telling the Truth" - on Mary Lefkowitz's Demolishing of Afrocentric Baloney

Update 5/7/08 - John J. Miller posts an audio interview with Mary Lefkowitz.

- At a local college some years ago, I heard a guest lecture by Mary Lefkowitz, classicist at Wellesley College (now retired).  I recognized that she grounded her lecture in established fact and that she was a woman of uncommon courage in her willingness to confront Afrocentric nonsense.  What is Afrocentrism?  John Leo's column explains and at the same time spotlights Lefkowitz's most recent book, History Lesson: A Race Odyssey, "a personal account of what she experienced as a result of questioning the veracity of Afrocentrism and the motives of its advocates. She has advanced the intellectual case against Afrocentrism before, in "Not Out of Africa:How Afrocentrism Became An Excuse to Teach Myth as History (1997); here she takes a more personal approach..."

I am so glad I came across John Leo's article, published today in the Wall Street Journal.  Read it for background into the controversy and weep over the "kind of affirmative action program for the re-writing of history" that is Afrocentrism.  (continued on page 2)

OBAMA DOESN'T UNDERSTAND THE CRISIS IN TEACHING HISTORY IN THE UNITED STATES

As usual, Victor Davis Hanson says it best (my underlining):

Today a news item reported on Sen. Obama’s recent take on the current status of education:

“He said schools should do a better job of teaching all students African-American history "because that's part of American history," as well as women's struggle for equality, the history of unions, the role of Hispanics in U.S. and other matters that he suggested aren't given enough attention.”

"I want us to have a broad-based history" taught in schools, he said, even including more on "the Holocaust as well as other issues of oppression" around the world.”

But anyone familiar with the historical illiteracy of today’s college student understands that more of the “oppression” history that Sen. Obama is advocating is precisely the problem, not the solution. Our high school students already know who Harriet Tubman is, but not U.S. Grant or Shiloh. They have been introduced to Crispus Attucks, but not Alexander Hamilton. They know World War II largely as the Japanese internment and Hiroshima (cf. Reverend Wright on that), but have not a clue about the Bulge or Okinawa or the Munich travesty.

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IS THERE A RAPE CRISIS ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES? NO.

Heather MacDonald in her L.A. Times article "What campus rape crisis?" sheds light on yet another myth perpetuated by feminist lies. Her article is subtitled: "Promiscuity and hype have created a phony epidemic at colleges." 

David Horowitz, in calling attention to this article, says:

For twenty-five years academic feminists have been pushing a big lie and using it to extract millions from student pockets. The big lie, which is ably exposed by Heather MacDonald in the LA Times is that one out of every four campus females is raped by a campus male. In fact, as MacDonald shows, there are almost no such campus rapes. But the feminists have used this phony claim to extract millions of dollars from student pockets and establish campus "rape centers" as an institutional beach-head for spreading hate propaganda against men in general and male students in particular.

Update: The full-length version of Heather MacDonald's article can be found here.  The sub-title of this article reads: "The reality: bogus statistics, feminist victimology, and university-approved sex toys."

NIU MASSACRE - "GUN-FREE ZONES" ALLOW KILLERS TO SLAUGHTER THE INNOCENT

- UPDATE 2/19/08 -  Dennis Prager has 5 brilliant points to make about the murders that took place on the NIU campus.  Click here for insightful observations. 

- Re: the Northern Illinois University massacre (also here and here), we can no longer tolerate "gun free zones," i.e. areas reserved for killers to shoot their victims at random and at leisure.  My sentiments are with this writer:

At one time I was very against arming teachers or allowing qualified students to carry on campus. I’m not any more. These maniacs go to those schools KNOWING that their’s will be the only gun there - until police arrive. And that can take minutes.

If you know anything about guns, or ever fire on a range, take any semi-automatic pistol with, say, two extra loaded magazines, and see how long it will take you to fire every

BEETHOVEN AS RAPIST

If one wants to keep up with the craziness taking place on university campuses, you'll want to peruse the Phi Beta Cons blog  from time to time.  (See below).  But there is also much that is very insightful.

This post appeared Friday, Jan. 25.

         Beethoven as Rapist   [Candace de Russy]

Even the great composer's incomparable Ninth Symphony can be the object of mad feminist ravings in academe. In the Wall Street Journal, Stuart Isacoff describes:

a new breed of musicologist who sees the organizing principle of Western art music — its reliance on the gravitational pull of tonal centers, and the artful control of musical tension and resolution — as a direct reflection of the male libido and its primal urge toward domination. One of the leading figures of this school of thought, Susan McClary, found in the opening movement of Beethoven's masterpiece the "murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release" . . . this sociological approach to musical analysis . . . thrives today on many college campuses, where scholarly rigor often takes a back seat to freakish conjecture — especially when this serves the ideological goal of reducing great works to the mere tinkerings of "dead white men." (The irony, of course, is that cultures producing music free of those tonal principles — the presumptive ideal — generally turn out to be the most historically oppressive to women.)

But not to fret; as Isacoff writes, "Beethoven will survive."

Edward Said, Fabricator and Plagiarist

Michael Rubin posts the following:

Edward Said remains the subject of hero-worship throughout much of the academy. He is often quoted approvingly by students and professors whether they have read him or not.  Most everyone that cites Said's  Orientalism is unaware of his methodology or his cherry-picked sample (he ignored Russian and German work, even though Russian and German scholars account for perhaps 90-percent of Orientalist scholarship in the time periods he examined).   Fabricating facts and plagiarism are only one part of Said's legacy, however.  Efraim Karsh and Rory Miller provide a useful review of Said's record and legacy, here.

Saudis Give Big to U.S. colleges

To further their agenda.

The End of the University as We Know It

David Horowitz examines a new report put out by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) called "Freedom in the Classroom" and finds it a shocking departure from previous accepted academic standards.  (A shortened version of Horowitz's analysis can be found in a Weekly Standard article.  From that I quote the following):

In its latest response to complaints about the politicization of higher education, the American Association of University Professors has embraced a novel view: "It is not indoctrination for professors to expect students to comprehend ideas and apply knowledge that is accepted as true within a relevant discipline." Under this precept, put forth in the AAUP's recent report "Freedom in the Classroom," teachers are no longer held to standards of "scholarly" or "scientific" or "intellectually responsible" discourse, but to whatever

Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week on College Campuses - A Report

Update 10/29/07 - Dennis Prager at Univ. of Cal at Santa Barbara  reports a triumph  -  Phyllis Chesler reports that her evening at Columbia University with Ibn Warraq and Christina Hoff-Sommers was likewise a "refreshing triumph."  (Note: Warraq has just published a new book, Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism)  - Here is a report from the University of Pennsylvania, and here is a report from George Washington University.  David Horowitz offers a summary overview of the week saying,

The week of October 22-26 witnessed the largest, most successful campus demonstrations by students not associated with the anti-American left in the history of campus protests. 114 college and university campuses participated in “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, which highlighted the threat from the Islamic jihad, and the oppression of Muslim women. It featured speakers such as former Senator Rick Santorum, Ann Coulter, Robert Spencer, Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan, Michael Medved, Dennis Prager and Daniel Pipes . . .

In response, anti-American leftists and organizations supporting the Islamic jihad organized a national campaign of vitriol and hate that was almost unprecedented. This campaign revealed the lengths to which the anti-American left will go to prevent the public from discussing the nature of the holy war that has been declared on them. It was characterized by a political McCarthyism whose levels of character assassination and slander had not been seen since the early days of the Cold War. Speakers for the events and students organizing them were attacked as religious bigots and anti-Muslim “racists” and “fascists.”

Our speakers showed admirable courage in their willingness to endure the slander and attacks they knew that challenging the left would entail. But it was our students who braved the fiercest attacks from members of their campus communities. I can’t say enough how proud I am of the students I met this week on the campuses I visited, and the many others who worked with us to make this week a success. Without their willingness to stand up and be counted, there would have been no Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.

David Horowitz Updates Plans for "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" on University Campuses Oct. 22-26

Update 10/21/07 - The Hillary-Soros Team fights "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week". In another report the Washington Times quotes Horowitz: "The left has only one strategy when dealing with its opponents, and that's to smear them," Mr. Horowitz, 68, says in a telephone interview. "They learned from Stalin."

Update 10/16/07 - Horowitz discusses the resistance brewing on the Columbia University campus. Among the many points he makes is this one:

... the very term “Islamo-Fascism” was coined by moderate Muslims who were being slaughtered in Algeria during the 1990s. A group now calling itself “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb” killed between 150,000 and 200,000 “unclean” Muslims during that decade.   ( more. . )

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Horowitz explains:

As it now stands, we will have events at over 100 schools. At over 30 of them, there will be major speeches by figures such as former Sen. Rick Santorum, Ann Coulter, Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer. At more than twenty, students will show an uncut version of "The Path to 9/11" the ABC mini-series the Clintons censored. At another dozen there will be an unheard of event: sit-ins in Women's Studies Departments to protest their silence over the oppression of women in Islam. Most importantly, IFAW week is getting major coverage in the press. The campus papers of many schools are publishing multiple articles discussing "Islamo-Fascism" which was the goal of our protest to begin with. Moreover, the buzz is becoming louder every day.

As we foresaw, when we adopted the name "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week," the Left has reacted and guaranteed our success. The goal of the left is to suppress mention of the term Islamo-Fascism because for the left America is the enemy. Since the left is at war with America, it cannot afford to have the evils of Islamo-Fascism discussed. [my emphases]   more . . .

- Previous post - Keith Olbermann and Left-Wing Activists Attack DavidHorowitz and "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week"

Michael Barone on "Ivory Tower Decay"

Barone writes accurately, and indisputably, that

America’s colleges and universities have become, and have been for some decades, the most closed-minded and intellectually dishonest institutions in our society.  (more . . .)

Add to the above this further note  supplied by John J. Miller:

The Chronicle summarizes a new report on professors and politics:

Conservatives are a small minority within the American professoriate, according to a major study whose results were released on Saturday. The study — which is arguably the best-designed survey of American faculty beliefs since the early 1970s — found that only 9.2 percent of college instructors are conservatives, and that only 20.4 percent voted for George W. Bush in 2004.   (more . . .)

Keith Olbermann and Left-Wing Activists Attack David Horowitz and "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week"

Update 10/15/07 - David Horowitz reports the latest news.

Update 10/10/07 - Attempts to muzzle the Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week

Update 10/2/07 0 - Horowitz answers Matthew Yglesias's objections here.

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David Horowitz, in his own words:

Last Friday, on his MSNBC television show, Olbermann named me “The Worst Person in the World.” “The Worst Person” is a regular feature of Countdown, for which Olbermann is the host, and the same program featured an attack on a previous “worst person,” Fox anchor Bill O’Reilly. Olbermann called O’Reilly “unhinged,” while slandering him as a racist despite the lack of any evidence that would justify such a defamatory claim.

It was a performance familiar from the witch-hunting left. What act of mine, you might wonder, qualified me for such a distinction? . . .  What I did to deserve this distinction was organize a nation-wide campus effort called “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week,” which will be held on over 100 campuses on October 22-26. This is shaping up as the largest conservative student protest ever and has the anti-American left in a frenzy. Its purpose is to alert the academic world to the dangers America faces from Islamic terrorists such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for example, the recent guest of Columbia University, whose president called him a “petty tyrant” when in fact he is a global menace. An even more damning sin of mine, it seems, was to make a theme of the Week’s events “the oppression of women in Islam.”

Read the article to find out how the Left is organizing against Horowitz and "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week."  Horowitz describes the Left's position this way:

In other words: America has not been attacked by Islamo-fascists, nor are there such fascists. All talk of “Islamo-fascism” is a form of religious hatred, a means of justifying America’s racist wars of aggression against Arabs and Muslims. This is the message of leftwing flak-catchers for America’s enemies, Keith Olbermann among them.

In response, he says:

The scurrilous slander campaign that has been launched against Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week casts an illuminating spotlight on the war at home. The left in America has taken its stand. Just as progressives ran interference for the Soviet empire during the Cold War, progressives are today running interference for the Islamo-Fascists.

Colleges as Brothels

I guess I should say "colleges as brothels without the exchange of money."  Once again Chuck Colson points out the deplorable state of sexual license on American colleges and universities.  This time he focuses on a movie Princeton University freshmen are required to attend, a movie which warns about alcohol and date rape, but at the same time glorifies the destructive hook-up culture.  (Note Colson's links at the end of this and all his articles.)

Former New York Mayor Ed Koch Asks Chancellor Bollinger of Columbia U.: "As an Encore, Why not invite Hugo Chavez?"

Former Mayor of New York City, Ed Koch, expresses my views exactly:

All in all, it was a fiasco for America and a blunder by Mr. Bollinger, as well as a coup for Mr. Ahmadinejad. His goal was not to respond to Mr. Bollinger, the Columbia students, or Americans seeing him on television. His goal was to talk over their heads to the Islamic world and its terrorists and show how he bearded the Columbia lion in its own den.

President Bollinger, as an encore, why not invite Hugo Chavez? I think he'd come. You could provide him with a platform to enhance his reputation.

Hugh Hewitt comments on Bollinger's "Fantasy World":

Even a cursory examination of The Looming Tower or Inside The Jihad or any of many other serious books on the Islamist war against the West dwells on the crucial role of propaganda in pushing the extremist message, both Salafist and Shia versions. Today's fiasco

The Phoniness of "Free Speech" Boasts on Colleges Campuses

Mark Levin nails it:

Free Speech on College Campuses?

Who's kidding whom? Ask David Horowitz, FIRE, and other people who have to deal with left-wing administrators, faculty, and students about free speech. While Columbia University opened its arms to a leading terrorist, over at Seton Hall in New Jersey, Tom DeLay and Sirius radio host Andrew Wilkow had been invited by the campus Republicans to speak on Wednesday. The University has now canceled the event apparently claiming that DeLay would cast a negative light on their precious school. This is disgraceful.

At Stanford University, the Hoover Institution has appointed Donald Rumsfeld to a short-term chair, and students, led by an ex-professor, are leading protests against it — even though Hoover is an independent entity on campus.

Ask Ann Coulter, Bill Kristol, Pat Buchanan, Jim Gilchrist, and numerous others about the reception they've received at some of these schools. Ask these schools about their tenure policies, and how they discriminate against conservative academics. Ask them about their free speech codes, which have the effect of crushing civil dissent.

Academic Freedom and the Problem of Indoctrination in the Classroom: NAS vs. AAUP

Stanley Kurtz tells us the historical importance of this debate in these words:

History in the Making   [Stanley Kurtz]

I’d like to urge folks to go an read what I think will someday be looked back on as an historic debate on the meaning of academic freedom and the problem of classroom indoctrination. At the Inside Higher Ed website, Peter Wood, of the National Association of Scholars, has just posted a powerful reply to the recent "Freedom in the Classroom" statement issued by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). (See "Truths R Us.") More important, Wood links to an extraordinary, formal, point-by-point response to the recent AAUP statement, co-authored by Peter Wood and Stephen Balch, and posted at the website of the National Association of Scholars (NAS).

Debates over academic freedom commonly hark back to now legendary statements by the AAUP from 1915, 1940, and 1970 on the topic. I believe that when future generations want to understand the nature of the debate over academic freedom and classroom indoctrination in our own era, they will hark back to the AAUP statement and the reply by the leaders of the NAS of 2007. This is history in the making, and compelling reading as well.

If for no other reason, you should look at Wood’s piece in order to read the "lost" section of the AAUP’s founding statement of academic freedom, which apparently exists nowhere else on the Internet, and which puts the AAUP of today to shame. But don’t stop there. These dueling statements on academic freedom and proper conduct in the classroom will resonate for years.

The Scandal of Social Work Education

Update 10/15/07 - George Will offers an article on the same subject here.

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Click here for a major report prepared by the National Association of Scholars.  The Executive Summary can be found here.

Update 9/20/07 - Peter Wood, the executive secretary of the NAS, offers a commentary.   Excerpts:

The NAS report, “The Scandal of Social Work Education,” tracks the ideological requirements for becoming a licensed social worker. You may have thought social work was about helping the unfortunate. No; up-to-date social work is about combating “poverty, racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ableism, and ageism” by advocating “social and economic justice.”

. . . Moral reservations about abortion? Doubts about gay adoption? Emily Brooker, a traditional Christian student, sued Missouri State University in 2006 after it brought her up on charges for

Political Correctness on American University Campuses

Update: 9/17/07 - Stanley Kurtz offers a powerful positive review of "Indoctrinate U."  He notes further that "folks in the Washington DC area have a chance to see it–and more. Indoctrinate U will be showing at the Kennedy Center as part of the American Film Renaissance film festival, which looks like it will be traveling to Dallas, Traverse City, and Hollywood as well. This festival will be showing a number of movies of interest to conservatives, including "The Call of the Entrepreneur" and "ACLU: At War With America."

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Deroy Murdock writes of Indoctrinate U. as

a fascinating and jarring new film by first-time documentarian Evan Coyne Maloney. Supported by the Moving Picture Institute and premiering September 28 at Washington, D.C.’s American Film Renaissance festival, “Indoctrinate U.” CAT-scans the politically correct cancer that gnaws away at American higher education.

Murdock writes further:

Maloney reports that 91 percent of campuses restrict student speech. Brown University banned words that cause “feelings of impotence, anger, or disenfranchisement.” West Virginia University instructed students that “instead of referring to…‘girlfriend’ or ‘boyfriend,’” they should

The Christian Worldview: Most Popular Veritas Forum Lectures Now Available on the Internet

Updated 3/22/08 - I see that the links below no longer work.  Here is a new website address for Veritas Forum lectures. Those listed below are easily accessible.

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I was astounded earlier today to discover that Veritas Forum lectures are now available on the internet.  The new technology is making my box of cassette tapes obsolete!  Here is a list of the most popular talks (audio and sometimes video): 

1. The Jesus of Myth and History N. T. Wright (28063 views)
2. Does God Exist? William Lane Craig (23793 views)
3. What Does It Mean To Be Human? Dallas Willard (19059 views)
4. So What? N. T. Wright (15820 views)
5. The Power of Porn Gene McConnell (15607 views)
6. Atheism, Theism, and the Meaning of Life JP Moreland (15445 views)
7. The Genius of Jesus Dallas Willard (13083 views)
8. Rethinking Relationships Don Miller (13066 views)
9. Time for Truth Os Guinness (11695 views)
10. The Fingerprint of God Erwin McManus (11278 views)

Here's a list of popular topics:

Arts, Atheism, Authority of Scripture, Beauty, Big Bang, Business, C.S. Lewis, Career/Vocation, Catholicism, Christianity, Communication, Creation, Death, Depression, Dostoevsky, Drama/Theatre, Economics, Education, Engineering & Technology, Environmental Studies & Natural Resources, Ethics, Evangelicalism, Evil, Evolution, Existence of God, Faith, Feminism, Gender/Body, Government & Public Policy, Health Sciences, History, Hope, Humanities, Humanity, Hypocrisy, Identity, Islam, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jesus, Law, Lord of the Rings, Love/Relationships, Materialism, Media, Movies/Film, Music, Natural Sciences & Math, Naturalism, Origins, Pain/Suffering, Pluralism, Politics, Pop Culture, Pornography, Post Modernism, Poverty, Power, Relativism, Religion/Multi-Faith, Resurrection, Salvation, Science, Sin, Social Justice, Social Sciences, Theism, Theology & Religious Studies, Tolstoy, Truth, University/Scholarship, Violence, War, Worldview,

You may also explore the archive by talk, presenter, or forum using the links above.

"Veritas Forums are university events that engage students and faculty in discussions about life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life."

A Must-Read Interview with David Horowitz. To repeat... This is Must-Reading!

I just read an interview with David Horowitz that to my mind brilliantly encapsulates the struggle bedeviling American society and the world today.   If anyone wants to get "unmuddled" in the shortest possible amount of time, then reading this interview is an absolute must.  I reproduce it in its totality below.   Emphases are my own.  

Interview with Roger Scruton, Author of "Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged"

Bernard Chapin has published his  interview with Roger Scruton, author of the new book, Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged.  I thought the following quite on target:

BC: In the hopes of helping young minds combat cultural relativism and postmodernism, can you explain to us why we should study some writers over others? Why is Shakespeare a more important writer than Toni Morrison? How would you answer the question, “Who is to say which work is better than another?”

RS: Shakespeare is a more important writer than Toni Morrison because he presents a vaster array of believable characters, in strange situations brilliantly evoked, which put them to the test in ways that illustrate and command sympathy for the human condition. The question 'who is to say what work is better than another?' is easily answered: the one with good judgment. How is good judgment acquired? By studying the canon and making comparisons.

Devastating Effects of the College "Hook-Up" Culture

Miriam Grossman is a college psychiatrist who has written a book, Unprotected.   Chuck Colson calls it a memoir of misery as Dr. Grossman "routinely treats women who are suffering the consequences of casual hookups. They suffer from eating disorders, depression, self-mutilation, a multitude of STDs, and post-abortion syndrome."  Colson writes:

And yet, instead of declaring war on the hook-up culture, Grossman says, political correctness decrees that

Women Keep Outnumbering Men in College (As If You Didn't Know)

This article surveys the situation.  Sounds like it's past time to start reading Christina Hoff Sommers' The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men.

Harvard Club Promotes Abstinence -- But What A Sexual Mess Harvard Is

Story here.   (HT: Drudge)

Narcissistic College Students

The Asssociated Press has an article  headlined:   "Study finds rising narcissism, self-centeredness among college students"

NEW YORK - Today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.

    ”We need to stop endlessly repeating ’You’re special’ and having children repeat that back,” said the study’s lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. ”Kids are self-centered enough already.”
    Twenge and her colleagues, in findings to be presented at a workshop Tuesday in San Diego on the generation gap, examined the responses of 16,475 college students nationwide who completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006.  (more)

Relativism on College Campuses is not a Substantive Position by Leftists, It is a Tactic

David French at Phi Beta Cons makes the point well:   

Our colleges are not overrun with either moral or cultural relativism. The problem is the opposite — moral and cultural absolutism that is occasionally so extreme that it would make a Bob Jones theology professor blush.

In a truly morally relativistic environment, there would be great difficulty in getting a straight answer from a professor, diversity dean, or student activist on the morality of same-sex marriage, for example. Or the justice of the Iraq war, or even the worth of Wal-Mart. Instead, does anyone have any doubt what the academic establishment’s answer is to any of the following questions: Was the Iraq war justified? Is consciously race-based affirmative action a proper response to historical injustice? Should achieving “diversity” be a central goal of the academy?

As for cultural relativism, does the academy paint a “warts and all” picture of indigenous cultures? Even the act of equating the Aztecs and Greeks (to take Murray’s example) requires that the academy magnify the flaws of the Greeks and minimize the flaws of the Aztecs, so that the culture that invented democracy is “equated” with a culture organized around human sacrifice on a mass scale. The “western civilization bad, other cultures good” formula of so many lectures and books is anything but relativistic. Simplistic, maybe, but not relativistic.

I routinely receive correspondence from concerned parents who worry about relativism. What they need to understand, however, is that academic relativism is a tactic, not a substantive position. When a student of orthodox faith or a person of traditional belief presents a position, they are often countered with the classic relativistic verbal shrug (i.e. “that may be true for you but not for me”), but when the shoe is on the other foot — when the issue is dear to the heart of the academic — the position could not be more absolute. Insults like “racist” or “sexist” or “homophobe” do not come from relativism, but from absolutism.

(HT: Constitutionally Correct)

Anti-Israel Special Programs on University Campuses Accuse Israel of Apartheid

The propaganda against Israel flourishes on university campuses.  Click here for a report.  It can get pretty nasty.

A Jewish student at CUNY, raised his hand to ask the question, “Do you support terrorism?” The Arab presenters refused to answer. Rister [the student]politely repeated the same question only to find himself set upon by five CUNY security cops who dragged him from his seat and removed him from the room. One officer continued holding him by the neck on the outside escalator and repeatedly banged Rister’s head against the wall as the escalator descended. Then, before they reached the bottom, the guard threw Rister head first down the remaining steps, injuring him severely enough to be taken to the hospital in a neck brace.  There were seven witnesses to the unprovoked attack . . .

Daniel Pipes' Talk at UC-Irvine Disturbed by Muslim Students

Daniel Pipes, the important scholar of Middle Eastern matters, had his speech on "The Threat to Israel's Existence" interrupted at University of California - Irvine by what he said appear to be " goons of an Islamist persuasion."   His weblog links to videos of his speech (including the disturbances) plus there are links to several commentaries on the event.    One of the videos includes Pipes' complete address which is a handy way to get up to speed on the current threat to Israel.   (HT: Candace de Russy at Phi Beta Cons)

Harvard Follies - A Further Descent into Feminist Madness Looms

Heather MacDonald reports :  "America's oldest university selects a dreadful president."

The feminist takeover of Harvard is imminent. The Harvard Crimson reported yesterday that the university is about to name as its new president Drew Gilpin Faust, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. . . 

Faust runs one of the most powerful incubators of feminist complaint and nonsensical academic theory in the country. You can count on the Radcliffe Institute’s fellows and invited lecturers to proclaim the “constructed” nature of knowledge, gender, and race, and to decry endemic American sexism and racism. Typical guest speakers include left-wing journalists Susan Faludi and Barbara Ehrenreich. . .  

 This triumph of feminist ideology is a tragedy not just for Harvard, but for the American academic world, which will undoubtedly follow Harvard’s lead in elevating feminist politics to premier intellectual standing. (More)

Carol Ionone weighs in blaming former President Summer's backing down and the supine cowardice of science faculty from standing up to the radical and ferocious feminists.

The question arises, why didn't more scientists come to Summers's aid and defense?  The answer is that they are cowards. A friend tells me that they are afraid of losing their funding and even more, that they are really, really frightened of female anger. This reminds me of a professor who told me years ago that he had been through the Warsaw ghetto uprising, but that nothing incited melting fear in his heart like the sight of an angry feminist student approaching his office. What has happened to our society? Have testosterone levels so diminished that men are unable to stand up for what is right because they fear women?

Peter Berkovitz Reflects on the Modern University Today

This long article  by Peter Berkowitz surveys the chaotic state of the university curriculum  today.  The piece begins with these paragraphs: 

An auto repair shop in which mechanics and owners could not distinguish a wreck from a finely tuned car would soon go out of business. A hospital where doctors, nurses, and administrators were unable to recognize a healthy human being would present a grave menace to the public health. A ship whose captain and crew

HOW TO GO TO M.I.T. FOR FREE

The above is the heading of a Christian Science Monitor article that is truly fascinating.  The article begins this way:

By the end of this year, the contents of all 1,800 courses taught at one of the world's most prestigious universities will be available online to anyone in the world, anywhere in the world. Learners won't have to register for the classes, and everyone is accepted.

The cost? It's all free of charge.

The OpenCourseWare movement, begun at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2002 and now spread to some 120 other universities worldwide, aims to disperse knowledge far beyond the ivy-clad walls of elite campuses to anyone who has an Internet connection and a desire to learn.

What's the Situation on University Campuses Today?

In a speech given at the November 2006 "Restoration Weekend" in Florida, David Horowitz offered a comprehensive overview of the political indoctrination now found on university campuses.  He reports on the progress that the "Academic Bill of Rights" is making across the nation.  It's a liberal approach to education that eschews tyrannical indoctrination.   In the course of his address,  Horowitz mentions the Marxist approach so common on campuses today:

At every university I go to, I ask, “Are you taught that there are race, sex, and class hierarchies?” The hands always go up because that is what they are taught. It’s an idea derived from the Communist Manifesto. If you

Academic Moral Decline in Universities: Witness Middle East Studies

Most everyone recognizes the serious moral decline on university campuses today - the drinking, the cheating, the sexual anarchy.  But what about the academic moral health of the professoriat?  Winfield Myers writes about "the long, steady politicization of the American university, in which learning has become the handmaiden of 'progressive' ideologies."   "Nowhere," he says, "is this more obvious than in the field of Middle East studies."

In an era of worldwide conflict between civilized life and death-loving radical Islamist terrorism, Americans should expect learned men and women in university posts to address key problems — jihadism, extremist varieties of Islam, and suicide bombings — with an eye toward their defeat. After all, the freedom

Israel Guilty of Apartheid?

The Stanford student organization Coalition for Justice in the Middle East (CJME) accuses Israel of practicing apartheid.  This article refutes the charge.

The analogy between apartheid and Israel is absurd. The revival of national sovereignty in the Jewish homeland is not a manifestation of European colonialism, in contrast to the white settlers (Afrikaans, English and others) who created Johannesburg and Pretoria. Jews are indigenous to the Middle East as is the Jewish national language, Hebrew. Anyone who has ever visited Israel knows that it is one of the most diverse multi-ethnic democracies in the world.

Read the whole article and its defense of Israel against this slander.

Youth Today: Nihilistic Universities vs. Purposeful, Dedicated Military

Hugh Hewitt and Victor Davis Hanson have a conversation.  It's literate.  It's insightful.  It's "right on".    The following segment deals with the military and the university.  It's VDH speaking:

. . . We have a crisis with our youth today, but they're not the youth in the military. They're the youth in the college campuses, and the professors that teach them, not the officers who teach our young enlisted men. If you go out on a carrier today, and I have, and you see 19 year olds, they eat together with all different races and religions, they're entrusted with $70 million dollar airplanes. You go to a college campus in the free speech area, you see segregation you haven't seen since the 1950's, and you see people who are listless, they don't know what they do, they absorb these rants and rages from the professor's class that is immune from scrutiny because of tenure in a way that officers are not. The problem we're having, really, is the university, and what emanates from it. But the military is one of the last bastions of Americanism that goes right to the founding fathers. It's the thing that keeps us going. It's the fountainhead for our values.

A Fresh Assessment of Nafisi's "Reading Lolita in Tehran"

Thomas Hibbs' begins his essay on Reading Lolita in Tehran this way:

"Perhaps to remain a poet in such circumstances is also to reach the heart of politics. The human feelings, human experiences, the human form and face, recover their proper place — the foreground.” Saul Bellow’s description of the function of art under the regimes of totalitarianism is a recurring motif in Azar Nafisi’s book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, an autobiographical/literary study of the power of literature in the Islamic Republic of Iran. A brilliant and dramatically moving exposition of the power of literature to transform souls and create spaces for the retention of community and identity in the midst of totalitarian oppression, Nafisi’s crisply written book has come under fire as an alleged instrument of neoconservative imperialism. An article by Hamid Dabashi from Columbia University has given rise to mainstream treatments of the controversy in the Chronicle or Higher Education and in major newspapers. In an odd and mostly contrived controversy that says less about contemporary global politics than it does about certain pockets of the contemporary academy, what is at risk of being lost is Nafisi’s powerful account of the nature of liberal education.

THE CHALLENGE OF BEING A CHRISTIAN ON A UNIVERSITY CAMPUS

Today Jamie Glazov published an interview with Abby Nye, a 2006 graduate of Butler University and author of Fish Out of Water:  Surviving and Thriving as a Christian on a Secular Campus. 

FP: Tell us what inspired you to write Fish Out of Water.

Nye: I went to college thinking I was prepared to face a secular environment having been well grounded academically and well-schooled in various philosophical thoughts and ideologies. I was wrong. I was ill prepared to face the hostility and mocking of liberal professors often directed toward Conservative and Christian thought. I wrote this book in hopes that other students could be better prepared.

Read the whole interview. 

HOROWITZ'S "ACADEMIC BILL OF RIGHTS" REVISITED

David Horowitz has been campaigning a long time for a change in the indoctrination now taking place on university campuses.  [See my earlier post]  That, of course, has produced strong opposition.  Horowitz says,

Opponents of efforts to end political discrimination and classroom indoctrination on college campuses follow a predictable game plan:

• Deny these problems exist;
• Question the veracity of anyone who claims they do; and, finally,
• Misrepresent the supporters of academic freedom as the very witch-hunters they are trying to thwart.

Michael Berube’s new book, What’s Liberal About The Liberal Arts: Classroom Politics and ‘Bias’ in Higher Education, is a case study in these techniques. Berube is a Professor of English Literature at Penn State and a member of the National Council of the American Association of University Professors, which has cast itself as the chief antagonist of the movement for academic reform.

Horowitz offers a long response to Berube's book and to those resisting the academic freedom he proposes.

REDEEMING REASON

Internet browsing turned up a fascinating website, Redeeming Reason.  It presents itself as "Intentional Christian Scholars in conversation with the Secular Mindset Today". 

A conference was held Nov. 3- 5, 2005  at the University of Chicago.  Speakers included Dallas Willard, Albert Alschuler, Philip Gleason, Susan Emmerich, Cornelius Plantinga, PaulGriffiths, Charles Emmerich, George Marsden, and Graham Walker    Best of all, the talks are available online here.   

From the website:  "One of our goals in this conference is to provide resources to students, academics and anyone interested in engaging the difficulties of reason, logic and the secular mindset in the face of Christianity." 

The 2006 conference will be held Nov. 9-11th.  Speakers include  Henry Schaeffer III, Alvin Plantinga, Ian Hutchinson, Ard Louis , Don York , Pat Reiff , John Suppe, Pattle Pun , Cal DeWitt , Alan Padgett

MEANINGLESS POSTMODERN ACADEMIC JARGON PRODUCED BY THE DADA MACHINE

From Matthew J. Franck over at Phi Beta Cons:

A friend at Marshall University in West Virginia, Steve Cooper, sends along a link to a priceless resource, the Postmodernism Generator. A masterpiece of programming, the PoMoGen will supply you with a short essay, utterly meaningless, grammatically correct, and complete with footnotes, in the most fashionable academic jargon of our time.  And best of all, the randomly generated but highly impressive-looking nonsense is brand new every time you visit the site or click “refresh.”  Visit the site for ten minutes, print out some samples, and go up for tenure in your favorite humanities or social science department!

This is truly amazing.  What a great example of gobbledygook sounding learned and erudite. 

Top 15 Universites in the World

In an article on the 100 best universities in the world, Harvard is ranked #1, followed by #2 Cambridge,  #3 Oxford, with Yale and MIT tied for 4th.   Then Stanford University (6), California Institute of Technology (7),  University of California Berkeley (8), Imperial College London (9) , Princeton (10), University of Chicago (11), Columbia (12), Duke (13), Beijing University (14), Cornell University (15).     American universities make up 11 of the top 15 spots.    Harvard has an endowment of 26 billion dollars.    (HT: Phi Beta Cons)

Columbia University - Scary, Unsafe Place of Mob Rule

Wow. . .    Universities are losing credibility, except as incubators of viciousness and mob rule.   Champions of reason?  Civil discourse?  Free exchange of ideas?  Forget it.   Do Ivy League Universities display leadership in intellectual seriousness?   What a joke!

Take a look at Columbia University students physically attacking the stage where Minutemen Project co-founder Jim Gilchrist attempted to give a speech.    Michelle Malkin has the story complete with video and  a liveblogged report.   

Randy at Rightwinged.com says

Malkin has had great coverage of these incidents over the years and I recommend doing some digging around her blog to learn more about past incidents if you're just learning about this pattern of intolerant liberal behavior. It only took me a minute to dig up this one post that links to many of these incidents.

Getting a College Education: It Doesn't Just "Happen"

Jeffrey Hart, long-time English professor at Dartmouth, published an article on "How to Get a College Education."    The article carries the subtitle: "It can be done, even in the Ivy League, if you keep your eye on the goal of education."    Here are useful suggestions on what courses to take and what courses to avoid.  Hart's essay first appeared in 1996 and  National Review republished it on 9/29/06.   It is definitely worth a careful read.

Public Universities Now Pontificate on Biblical Texts Treating Homosexuality

I didn't know that public universities are now taking theological positions (!) concerning homosexuality.  David French, of the Alliance Defense fund, notes the following:

Faced with large and active religious student groups who are often engaged in public debate over the Left’s currently fashionable civil-rights issue — homosexuality — public universities simply cannot restrain themselves. They are taking sides, not just politically, ideologically, and culturally, but religiously.

Take this official statement from the Georgia Institute of Technology (in its so-called “Safe Space” training manual):

Many religious traditions have taught, and some continue to teach, that homosexuality is immoral. These condemnations are based primarily on a few isolated passages from the Bible. Historically, Biblical passages taken out of context have been used to justify such things as slavery, the inferior status of women, and the persecution of religious minorities.

Displeased that the State of Georgia is comparing those who hold traditional religious views of sexuality to slaveowners? At least Georgia does not make religious conservatives look as, well, silly as the University of Michigan does:

Some texts of the Old Testament are used to condemn homosexuality. Taken literally and out of context, Biblical passages can be used to justify slavery, prohibit the wearing of red dresses, and eating of shrimp and shellfish, and to reinforce the inferiority of women.

Such commentary strikes me as quite out of bounds.   Of course texts can be taken out of context, but that is not to say that the forbidding of homosexual practices are such texts.  So now universities have become expert in biblical hermeneutics?  See Robert A. J. Gagnon The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Text and Hermeneutics and also Robert A. J. Gagnon and Dan O. Via,  Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views.   

Note:  ADF is challenging Georgia Tech’s Safe Space Training program in federal court.

The Overselling of Higher Education

George C. Leef of the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy has written a paper with the intriguing title:  The Overselling of Higher Education.  Read the first two pages, the Executive Summary, and see if you don't agree with his thesis.  Then, if you like, read the whole thing.  I think higher education has definitely been oversold.  His suggestions at the end of the paper are worth reading and heeding.    His paper was published September 5th.

On September 20th, he added this post:

A friend of mine who does economic consulting work in Oregon and Washington came across my paper "The Overselling of Higher Education" and helpfully sent me the following anecdote:

I was meeting with sheet metal contractors and their union representatives in Seattle. I learned that they could not find enough people to fill their apprenticeship program. Here's their deal: they need people with solid arithmetic and algebra skills, and good work habits. The person is paid to work as an apprentice, taking some classes at the same time. Classes are free. After 3 to 5 years, the person becomes a journeyman sheet-metal worker. The compensation package is then about $50 an hour, which is both wages and benefits. That works out to about $65k wages and $35 k benefits per year. And the person has no college loans. The bright, ambitious ones can go into management. Yet they cannot fill the apprenticeship program openings. Nobody wants to do blue collar work; everyone has been told to go to college. The high-school counselors are the worst.

According to the conventional wisdom of the education establishment, young people who enroll in college and then take a assortment of courses, often taught by grad students whose motivation and pedagogical skills are questionable, that don't require much effort to pass, are adding wonderfully to their "human capital." Conversely, those who might enter an apprentice program and learn how to work with metal, a skill that's in high demand, are regarded as "leakages" from the educational pipeline.

That makes no sense. 

Agreed.

THE MISERABLE STATE OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION TODAY

Donald Kagin in a useful article  takes a look at Harvard University and the state of university education today.  He sees major problems and a vacuousness which cannot be reformed from within.  Kagin comments on two recent books:  Harry Lewis's  Excellence without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education (Lewis was the Dean of Harvard College) and Harry Bok's Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should be Learning More.  (Bok served as President of Harvard from 1971 to 1991 and is now interim President).   Both Lewis and Bok offer incisive critiques, but Kagin thinks neither comes through with sufficient answers.  He concludes his essay saying,

As things stand now, no president appears capable of taming the imperial faculty; almost none is willing to try; and no one else from inside the world of the universities or infected by its self-serving culture is likely to stand up and say “enough,” or to be followed by anyone if he does.  Salvation, if it is to come at all, will have to come from without.

Reform never comes easily.  The university today reflects the advanced decadence of a tired civilization in need of intensive care and a major blood transfusion.  Islam thinks Western civilization is ripe for the picking.  The alternative is Christian reformation and revival.  I don't see anything else on the horizon that can slow the Gadarene march to oblivion.

Update 9/15/06:  David Horowitz examines the situation at the University of Colorado.  He reproduces catalog course descriptions and offers his comments.  Preceeding that he offers an introduction, saying he has visited hundreds of university campuses and

. . . I came to be familiar with the massive corruption of the academic enterprise that had occurred since I was an undergraduate in the 1950s, which had transformed large segments of the liberal arts schools into political parties of the academic left. This corruption was the result of a determined campaign by Gramscian radicals to use the universities as a platform for their “transformative” agendas of radical social change. In pursuit of their goals, they had created entire academic departments and fields, while subverting others in order to institute programs of study that were ideological rather than scholarly in content and design. To further these goals, they had instituted a system of intolerance (“political correctness”) to de-legitimize alternative intellectual paradigms and ideas, and had put in place the largest and most effective blacklist in the history of the country, whose purpose was to rid faculties of independent-minded professors, who might interfere with their designs.

By the time I made my university rounds, the refusal to hire conservative academics had led to a vanishing presence of conservative faculty members in many liberal arts disciplines. In the fields of sociology and anthropology, for example, the ratio of leftwing professors to conservatives was now approximately thirty-to-one. These two fields themselves had been largely transformed into exercises in leftwing ideology and bore little resemblance to scholarly inquiry. In these fields particularly, but in many others that still bore some resemblance to traditional academic pursuits there was a disturbing absence in university courses of assigned texts that did not validate or amplify with the professor’s ideological point of view. The net effect was to deny students access to alternative – and particularly -- conservative ideas that would challenge the course assumptions. The curriculum was thus transformed into a program of indoctrination.  (more)

Update 9/18/06: Horowitz puts the University of Texas under the microscope.  Later reports include Arizona State and Willamette University.