NYU protestors call for 'death to America' and 'long live the intifada' in horrifying notes in their 'Gaza' camp

Sinister pro-Hamas flyers have emerged on the NYU campus amid fears over rampant anti-Semitism and threatening behavior at demonstrations.

Posters declaring 'Death to America' and 'Long live the intifada' have been plastered around the Manhattan college's Gaza encampment, days after over 100 protestors were arrested in furious clashes with the NYPD.

The police force shared images of the fliers on Friday, noting the 'inflammatory literature and signage' observed at the 'illegal encampment.'

It comes as universities across America have struggled to control pro-Palestine protests, with aggressive police crackdowns sparking outrage as arrests have topped 2,000 nationwide.

While New York colleges including NYU and Columbia have continued to see hostile clashes between protestors and police, nearby Rutgers University became one of the first to bring their encampment to a close this week.

On Thursday, the New Jersey institution reached an agreement with protestors on eight of their ten demands, including severing its partnership with Tev Aviv University and creating Arab Cultural Centers on all campuses.

Although conflict at Rutgers' encampment only seemingly extended to counter-protestors chanting 'USA', the NYPD shared images of NYU's campus with more threatening displays of protest.

In one poster, activists called to 'disrupt/ reclaim/ destroy Zionist business interests everywhere', alongside: 'Death to America.'

'Squat or rot! Do what you want!' the poster read. 'Long live the intifada!'

In another flyer, protestors said they had 'enough with de-escalation trainings - where are the escalation trainings?'

'We can choose to learn how to build effective barricades, how to link arms most effectively to resist police attacks, or what type of expanding foam works best on the kind of doorknobs present in our universities,' it said.

'This is not rhetoric - this is an urgent need.'

The poster also took aim at references to 'outside agitators' - or 'professional protestors' - pretending to be students to join the cause, saying that they would actually be welcome to the movement.

'In the eyes of our enemies in the belly of the beast, we are all outside agitators,' the flyer concluded.

The NYPD also shared an image of a separate flyer, which said that 'those who call for peace are chasing a mirage.'

'As for the resistance: strike them everywhere,' it read. 'What kind of life is this that we live in peace with those who abuse our blood and the blood of our children, our men, our sisters?'

'To enemies: The time of calm you sing of will not return... you will not find a truce from us.'

The threatening posters at NYU come as Jewish students at nearby Columbia University shared their terrifying encounters with protestors with DailyMail.com.

Rory Wilson, a 22-year-old history major, shared his story of how he stared down an anti-Israel mob, which left him 'pinned against the door' and fearing for his safety.

He said: 'After a friend and I worked our way into the heart of the crowd swarming around Hamilton Hall, I looked out at the masked, shouting masses lit by the constant flicker of cameras.

'My adrenaline soared.

'We started pulling back a table propped against the doors and the crowd realized we were not with them.

'They started accusing us of aiding genocide and calling us idiots for risking ourselves for nothing.

'We were pinned against the door. I played contact sports in the past, so a bunch of shrieking Barnard girls half my size didn't faze me, but then a man dressed all in black jumped up beside us.

'He glared through the eye-slit in his mask – and I recognized that he had harassed me several days before, calling me a 'Zionist inbreeder.' I had no idea if he was a student or what he was willing to do.

'He started grabbing me, wrenching at my leg, trying to force me away from the doors. After a brief struggle, he jumped away and the screaming mob returned. Ultimately a friend got me out of there safely.

'Looking back now, I am grateful to God for the chance to have stood against them. Yet I am saddened that the university let the situation devolve into such chaos and intimidation.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13380619/flyers-NYU-college-campus-protest-israel-palestine.html

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Locks, chains, diversions: How Columbia students seized Hamilton Hall

New York: The protesters occupying Hamilton Hall on the campus of Columbia University seemed ready to stay awhile.

They had a microwave, an electric teakettle and sleeping bags, images distributed by police show. On a blackboard in a classroom-turned canteen, next to the words “Free Palestine” in bubble letters, they had written a chart for occupiers to list their dietary restrictions (two were vegan, one vegetarian).

In another classroom, they made a chart for security duties in two-hour shifts, and listed three Maoist revolutionary slogans as inspiration, according to the police videos.

“Political power comes from the barrel of a gun,” one of the slogans said.

For two weeks, Columbia’s campus had been the focal point of a growing crisis on college campuses around the country. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up tent encampments, held rallies and otherwise attempted to disrupt academic activities in an attempt to force universities to meet several demands, including divesting from Israel.

But the takeover of Hamilton Hall was a new turning point. The university decided to call in police to clear the building - drawing both harsh criticism and praise, and raising new questions about who, exactly, was behind the growing unrest.

The people who took over the building were an offshoot of a larger group of protesters who had been camping out on campus in an unauthorised pro-Palestinian demonstration. On Tuesday night, more than 100 of them – people inside the hall along with others outside on campus and those beyond Columbia’s gates – were arrested.

In the days since, Mayor Eric Adams, police officials and university administrators have justified the arrests in part by saying that the students were guided by “outside agitators,” as the mayor put it. “There is a movement to radicalise young people, and I’m not going to wait until it’s done and all of a sudden acknowledge the existence of it,” he said on Monday.

In an interview, Adams said that 40 per cent of people arrested after the protest at Columbia and another that night at City College “were not from the school and they were outsiders”.

But at Columbia, at least, the percentages appeared to be lower, according to an initial analysis of police data by The New York Times.

On Thursday, Adams and Edward A. Caban, the police commissioner, released a statement saying that of the 112 people arrested at Columbia, 29 per cent were not affiliated with the school. That percentage was similar to the findings of a Times analysis of a Police Department list of people who were arrested that night.

At City College, north of Columbia in Manhattan, 170 individuals were arrested, and about 60 per cent of them were not affiliated with the school, the statement said.

According to the Times analysis, most of those arrested on and around Columbia’s campus appeared to be graduate students, undergraduates or people otherwise affiliated with the school.

At least a few, however, appeared to have no connection to the university, according to the Times′ review of the list. One was a 40-year-old man who had been arrested at anti-government protests around the country, according to a different internal police document. His role in the organisation of the protest is still unclear.

The day after New York City police officers stormed into the building through a second-floor window and rooted out the protesters from Hamilton Hall, new details emerged about both the takeover of the building and the operation to reclaim it. The details revealed a 17-hour-long student occupation that was both destructive and damaging to property, amateurish, but in some respects, carefully organised.

The Police Department list showed that most of the more than 100 people arrested in the sweep of Hamilton Hall and other parts of campus on Tuesday evening were in their late 20s, white and female. The average age was 27; more than half were women.

The records do not specify which people were arrested inside the building. But at least 34 taken into custody on or around the campus were charged with burglary, which is defined by New York law as unlawfully entering a building with intent to commit a crime.

As of Thursday afternoon, at least 14 people who had occupied Hamilton Hall and later been arrested appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court. All were charged with trespassing, a misdemeanour.

The occupation began early Tuesday morning, after a group of protesters decided to escalate their efforts to force Columbia to divest from companies supporting Israel.

As hundreds of protesters gathered around Columbia’s central campus, forming a picket, a smaller group carried tents to a lawn on the opposite end of campus from Hamilton Hall, apparently to create a diversion, several witnesses said. At the same time, a second set of protesters approached the building.

A protester who had been hiding in the building after it closed let the others in, according to Columbia officials. Those protesters entered and told the security guard there to leave, said Alex Kent, a photojournalist who entered with them. They then began the process of bringing in supplies and barricading themselves in.

Some of the demonstrators wore Columbia sweatshirts; others wore all black. They also wore gloves, and masks around their faces. They hauled in metal police barricades to help reinforce the doors against entry, according to images shot by Kent.

Kent and the police said that the protesters covered security cameras, and threaded heavy metal chains through windows they had smashed in the building’s French-style doors, securing them with bicycle locks. Protesters carried wooden desks and tables from classrooms to help reinforce the doors. They joined the pieces of furniture together with white plastic ties to make them harder to move, police images show. They secured another door with a vending machine.

They got into a shoving match, Kent said, with a facilities worker who was still in the building, but the worker ultimately left. Outside, a career protest organiser in her 60s, Lisa Fithian — whom Adams later labelled a “professional agitator”— tried to talk down two student counterprotesters who were blocking the throng from further barricading the entrance. The protesters tried to physically remove the two students, who ultimately walked away; Fithian was not arrested.

Police officials had been in regular conversations with Columbia for weeks about how to handle the increasingly entrenched student encampment. Now, university officials were in crisis mode.

The school’s leadership team, including the board of trustees, met throughout the night and into the early morning, consulting with security experts and law enforcement, Minouche Shafik, Columbia’s president, wrote in a letter to the community.

“We made the decision, early in the morning, that this was a law enforcement matter, and that the NYPD were best positioned to determine and execute an appropriate response,” she wrote.

Once police got that call sometime after 11 am, “We had to put together a plan fast,” according to Jeffrey Maddrey, the chief of department, who described the police response during a news conference the day after the arrests.

On Amsterdam Avenue, outside Hamilton Hall, police brought in a BearCat truck equipped with an extendible ramp, so that officers could bypass the barricaded front doors and climb into an upper-story window.

Just after 9:30 pm, a group of officers in riot gear began lining up and then balancing across the BearCat’s platform, one by one. Once inside, police said, some students started throwing things at them.

Maddrey said police decided to deploy “distraction devices”— commonly called “flash-bangs” or stun grenades - that produce a very strong noise and burst of light to temporarily disorient people’s senses. At least eight loud bangs were heard echoing on footage from a police body camera.

Another team of officers entered through the building’s front doors, cutting the metal chains and rapidly dismantling the items blocking the entryway, the body camera video showed.

While city officials praised police for what they said was restraint in clearing the campus, protesters said some officers at the scene had been aggressive with demonstrators.

Protesters and independent journalists posted videos that appeared to show police officers pushing and dragging demonstrators outside Hamilton Hall’s main entrance during the arrests. The Columbia Spectator reported that outside Hamilton, officers threw protesters to the ground and slammed into them with metal barricades. Most journalists had been required by police to leave the area and could not document the scene.

“Students were shoved and pushed,” said Cameron Jones, a student in Columbia’s Jewish Voice for Peace chapter, who was watching from a nearby building. One protester lay motionless for several minutes, and was zip-tied while in that position, Jones said, before she came to and was carried away by police.

“It really seems as though the university, the police and Eric Adams are just trying to save face and not acknowledge the police brutality that happened on our campus,” he said.

Adams said there had been “no injuries or violent clashes” and the Fire Department said no one in Columbia’s immediate vicinity had been transported to the hospital.

During the sweep of Hamilton Hall, one officer fired a single gunshot, according to Doug Cohen, a press secretary for the Manhattan district attorney. No one was struck, and no students were in the area when the shot was fired. It was not clear whether the shot was fired intentionally.

The charges against those arrested ranged from burglary, trespassing and disorderly conduct to criminal mischief, resisting arrest and obstructing governmental administration. More than half of the people arrested at Columbia — those facing less serious charges — were issued summonses and released, or issued appearance tickets. The remaining 46 were arraigned and released without bail.

Some of those arrested at City College were students who had built an encampment earlier in the week in a plaza on the school’s campus.

But they also included people who had joined a protest outside the campus’s locked gates, on a public sidewalk. Many of the people on the police list arrested near City College appeared to be unaffiliated with the school.

On the list of protesters arrested at or near Columbia were a handful of people without clear ties to the university, including one man who apparently lives in the neighbourhood and who was arrested outside, and a woman who describes herself online as a “poet and farmer” who went to college in Vermont.

Attempts to reach several of the protesters on the list were unsuccessful as of Thursday afternoon.

Columbia students received more news Wednesday that their semester would not be returning to normal.

While classes had already ended Monday, the school announced that all final exams and academic activities on the Morningside Heights campus would be fully remote for the rest of the semester.

“It is going to take time to heal, but I know we can do that together,” Shafik wrote.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/locks-chains-diversions-how-columbia-students-seized-hamilton-hall-20240503-p5fot2.html

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Yarra Valley Grammar School students suspended over disturbing list rating female classmates

This is hysteria over nothing. We all evalute other people's appearance all the time. Why not discuss it? The behaviour described is not uncommon. It is simply adolescents enlisting their friends in at attempt to get an understanding of females, a common puzzle for males of all ages. And the sense of humour in it has been missed. There is nothing abnormal or dangerous about it.

Four boys from a Melbourne private school have been suspended after a list was posted to social media rating their female classmates.

The shocking list was posted by Year 11 students from Yarra Valley Grammar School in Ringwood onto the platform Discord and was discovered by the school last Wednesday.

It featured photos of female students and ranked them from best to worst as 'wifeys', 'cuties', 'mid', 'object', 'get out' and 'unrapeable'.

The students were suspended on Friday pending further investigation, Nine reports.

Yarra Valley Grammar principal Dr Mark Merry spoke to Nine on Sunday and described the post as 'disgraceful'.

'Respect for each other is in the DNA of this school, and so this was a shock not only to us … but it was a shock to the year level and the boys in the year level that see this as way, way out of line,' he said.

He said he was offended by the final category, and has since reported the matter to police to ensure the list wasn't linked to any criminal offence.

'As a father, I find it absolutely outrageous, disgraceful, offensive. As a principal, I need to make some decisions [about] what we do about all of this,' he said.

'My first impulse and concern is about the wellbeing of the girls concerned. I want to make sure they feel assured and supported by the school.'

'We are going to be consulting the police because the language used could be an inferred threat.'

'I don't think it was, but we need to get further advice on that…I'm hoping it was an appalling lapse in judgment.'

It costs around $30,000 a year to send a student to the elite Ringwood private school, and Dr Merry said the school prides itself on teaching 'respectful relationships'.

'We are well aware of the broader issues in relation to respecting women…we need to really do our best to ensure that young men understand their responsibilities and their boundaries of how they should behave,' he said.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13385557/Yarra-Valley-Grammar-School-ranking-list.html

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As IQ scores decline in the US, experts blame the rise of tech— how stupid is your state?

This is just the decline to be expected from declining educational standards. Education does have some influence on measured IQ. In a futile attempt to bridge the black/white "gap" in educational achievement Leftists have extensively "dumbed down" American education

Do all Americans go through a process of dumbening?

IQ scores in the US are on the wane for the first time ever — and experts are saying that technology is to blame.

A report from 2023 revealed the depressing reality — that the average intelligence test score fell from 100 to 98, a dismal, two point decline after a previously uninterrupted 30 point rise that began in 1905.

Test-takers are quizzed on matters of logic, spatial reasoning, visual and mathematical problem-solving and vocabulary. Scores have only been tracked since the beginning of the 20th century.

Now, experts theorize that the problem dates back to the millennium, when Americans began relying more heavily on tech in their daily lives — a reliance that has only grown.

“I do suspect that increased technology use could be playing a role in impacting our nation’s overall literacy levels,” Dr. Stefan Dombrowski, a psychology professor at Rider University, told the Daily Mail.

“It is well known that people who read and write more, generally score higher on IQ tests — of course, this is a chicken/egg scenario,” he explained.

“Do these individuals engage in reading and writing activities more frequently because they are brighter, or do they become brighter…on IQ tests because they read more?”

The data shows there is now a gap of approximately eight points between the smartest state — New Hampshire, with an average IQ of 103.2 — and the least smart, New Mexico, all the way down at 95, according to World Population Review.

Behind New Hampshire are Massachusetts (103.1), Minnesota (102.9) and Vermont (102.2), with North Dakota and Wyoming tied at number five (101.7).

The bottom five in 2024 are New Mexico (95), Louisiana (95.2), Mississippi (95.8), Alabama (96.4) and Nevada (96.6).

According to scientists, the average person ought to be able to score around 100 on an IQ test. Anyone managing 115-130 would be considered “gifted,” while an elite group — labeled as “genius” — will score between 130-145.

Hetty Roessingh, professor emerita of education at the University of Calgary, told the Mail previously that young children are no longer meeting traditional academic benchmarks as they grow up, now that technology has become so widely available.

‘There is a level of academic underachievement, where students are underprepared for college,’ Roessingh said.

The professor said that time spent with devices like phones and iPads means less time for more effective methods of increasing one’s intelligence level.

Adult brains are also at risk, as we spend more time asking Siri and Google for information than we might have previously stored in our brains, the Mail suggested.

https://nypost.com/2024/05/03/lifestyle/iq-scores-decline-in-the-us-where-does-your-state-rank/

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Rutgers students counter anti-Israel agitators on campus by waving American flag, chanting 'USA! USA!'

Anti-Israel protesters on campus at Rutgers University were countered by a large group of patriotic students waving an American flag and chanting "USA!" on Thursday.

Video from Thursday afternoon showed a large gathering between the two chanting groups on Voorhees Mall at the New Brunswick, New Jersey, university.

As the anti-Israel group yelled "Free, Free Palestine!" and "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!" the patriotic group could be heard repeatedly chanting "USA! USA! USA!"

At a later point during the demonstration, a couple of people within the anti-Israel group began instructing their protesters to link up to form a circular human chain in front of the students chanting in favor of America.

As the people were linking up, a woman within their group came over a bullhorn and said, "We are not protesting. We're not. We have to clean up. We have to leave."

It's unclear what she said after that, but it's likely the protesters were in the beginning stages of taking down their encampment after negotiations were reportedly made with Rutgers administrators.

Before they began breaking down their human chain, the "USA!" chants from the patriotic students surrounding them got louder and eventually turned into the singing of the National Anthem.

Some singing students could be seen holding their hands over their hearts and at least one student was waving an American flag. When they were done singing, the "USA!" chants resumed.

The anti-Israel protesters agreed to end their demonstration by 4 p.m. on Thursday after coming to an agreement with university administrators, according to a statement from Rutgers.

"All students involved will leave the encampment, remove all tents and personal belongings, and clear the mall of all trash. This agreement is contingent upon no further disruptions and adherence to University policies," the statement said.

A variation of eight of the protesters' ten demands were met by Rutgers administrators, according to the statement. The university did not immediately agree to divest from firms tied to Israel and said it would not be terminating its partnership with Tel Aviv University.

Rutgers said it is meeting with its endowment board and will undergo "the review process that is outlined in the university's investment policy."

The university did agree to accept at least 10 displaced Palestinian students to study at Rutgers on scholarship; to create an Arab Cultural Center on each Rutgers campus; to continue its relationship with Birzeit University and to look into student exchange and study abroad opportunities; to continue using the words "Palestine, Palestinians and Gazans" in future communications about the region; to hire a senior administrator with "cultural competency" in Arab, Muslim and Palestinian affairs; to create a feasibility study for the creation of a Department of Middle East Studies; to make sure flags representing all students enrolled at Rutgers are displayed in appropriate areas on campus; and to not retaliate against students, faculty or staff for simply participating in the encampment.

"We are pleased to report that these students have agreed to peacefully end their protest. They have committed to removing their tents and belongings, effectively clearing Voorhees Mall," Chancellor Francine Conway said in a statement. "This process began before the 4 p.m. deadline and is currently underway."

The video ended by showing the anti-Israel protesters taking down and packing up the encampment.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/rutgers-students-counter-anti-israel-agitators-on-campus-by-waving-american-flag-chanting-usa-usa/ar-AA1o4C9k?ocid=BingNewsSearch

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Over half of anti-Israel protestors arrested at the University of Texas in Austin during a protest earlier this week were adults with no ties to the Univeristy

The university issued a statement saying “of the 79 people arrested on our campus Monday, 45 had no affiliation with UT Austin.”

The protesters included a former elementary school teacher, a costume designer, a Palestinian store-owner and interpreter, all of whom were between 30 and 59 and unaffiliated with the university according to the Daily Mail.

Authorities confiscated guns, buckets of large rocks, bricks, steel enforced wood planks, mallets, and chains from protestors, according to the school, which said there had been staff members who were “physically assaulted and threatened.”

In addition, protestors “headbutted” police, hit them with horse poop, and slashed their car tires with knives.

UT President Jay Hartzell had called in state troopers to quell the violent protests on April 24 and make arrests.

“These numbers validate our concern that much of the disruption on campus over the past week has been orchestrated by people from outside the University, including groups with ties to escalating protests at other universities around the country,” the school said.

One of the protestors was 55-year-old Julian Reyes, who seems to be a protest regular in Austin featuring his confrontations with police he calls “micro tyrants” on his YouTube channel, according to the Daily Mail.

Reyes was one of the non-UT affiliated individuals arrested on April 24 for criminal trespassing after he allegedly refused to leave despite a notice to disperse given by police, according to an arrest warrant.

Reyes has been arrested at least nine times. He calls himself the “Lizard King” and was seen being arrested at UT while carrying a lizard.

Arrested Sophia Deloretto-Chudy, 28, is a former third-grade teacher who was fired from Becker Elementary School in Austin for badmouthing her superiors on TikTok over an administrative review of her teaching.

https://nypost.com/2024/05/03/us-news/texas-university-anti-israel-protestors-not-from-the-school-report/

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Pro-Palestinian protesters attacked at UCLA, hundreds arrested in New York at encampment

Groups of protesters have clashed overnight at a pro-Palestinian camp at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) — while 280 people have been arrested at similar encampments in New York.

More than 1,000 people have so far been arrested across the United States amid growing protests that have spread to Australian universities.

Witness footage from UCLA, verified by Reuters, showed people wielding sticks or poles to hammer on wooden boards being used as makeshift barricades to protect the pro-Palestinian protesters before police were deployed to the campus.

As student rallies have spread to dozens of schools across the US in recent days expressing opposition to Israel's war in Gaza, police have been called in to quell or clear protests.

The student protests in the United States have also taken on political overtones in the run-up to the presidential election in November, with Republicans accusing some university administrators of turning a blind eye to anti-Semitic rhetoric and harassment.

On Tuesday, UCLA officials announced that the encampment was unlawful and violated university policy. UCLA Chancellor Gene Brock said it included people "unaffiliated with our campus", though he provided no evidence of the presence of outsiders.

Footage from the early hours of Wednesday morning showed mostly male counter-demonstrators, many of them masked and some apparently older than students, throwing objects and trying to smash or pull down the wooden and steel barriers erected to shield the encampment.

Some screamed pro-Jewish comments as pro-Palestinian protesters tried to fight them off.

"They were coming up here and just violently attacking us," said pro-Palestinian protester Kaia Shah, a researcher at UCLA.

"I just didn't think they would ever get to this, escalate to this level, where our protest is met by counter-protesters who are violently hurting us, inflicting pain on us, when we are not doing anything to them."

Police said they had responded to a request from UCLA to restore order and maintain public safety "due to multiple acts of violence" within the encampment.

Broadcast footage later showed police clearing a central quad beside the encampment.

On Tuesday night local time, New York police arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators holed up in a building at Columbia University and removed a protest encampment that the Ivy League college had sought to dismantle for nearly two weeks.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said that about 170 of the 280 arrested at Columbia University and City College have received summonses.

The remaining 100 or so cases will be making their way through the court system, with the earliest arraignments later Wednesday afternoon and into the evening local time.

It is not yet known how many of those arrested were students and how many weren't affiliated with the colleges, he said.

New York mayor Eric Adams told reporters that the occupation of the building at Columbia was led by people not affiliated with the university.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-02/pro-palestinian-camp-attack-at-ucla/103793068

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Jewish students rally at University of Melbourne

Hundreds of pro-Israel supporters, many draped in Israeli and Australian flags, have gathered at The University of Melbourne.

The group is calling on educational institutions to make its campuses a safe place to be for Jewish students.

Zionist Federation of Australia chief executive officer Alon Cassuto opened the rally.

“We know that students don’t feel safe to be who they are and celebrate who they are,” he told the crowd.

“And since October 7 … anti-Semitism around the world has been on the rise.

“We’re here to say that the past seven months are not something we’re prepared to tolerate any longer. Our campuses have to be free of hate.”

The Australasian Union of Jewish Students president Noah Loven said he would not give the pro-Palestinian encampment any oxygen.

“We don’t want to lean into what they want. So we’re here to stand proud as your students and to stand together for peace,” Mr Loven said.

“In response to the troubling trend that has taken root in our academic institutions across Australia and New Zealand … Jewish students, my peers, have increasingly become targets of fear intimidation, and harassment.”

Protesters were holding signs that read “keep hate off campus” and “stand together against anti-semitism”.

Groups of police officers were stationed around the parameter of the event.

Jewish students say they are in fear of being intimidated and harassed on campus.

The Australasian Union of Jewish Students has voiced concerns and decided to take action after hearing reports of Jewish students avoiding their universities

The union is calling for a roundtable with Education Minister Jason Clare, state education ministers and vice chancellors, and are also demanding that universities implement policies that prohibit hate speech on campus.

It also demands that universities require students to show their student identification “to ensure that external extremist actors do not hijack our campuses”.

The union’s Victorian branch president Holly Feldman said she had friends at Columbia University in the US who have been harassed for being involved in Jewish life.

“The situation continues to escalate and Jewish students are distressed,” Ms Feldman said.

“It’s simply not safe for many Jewish students on campus at the moment, and it’s unacceptable that many feel they cannot attend their lectures and classes in person without fear of intimidation, harassment and violence,” Mr Loven said.

“This is not an issue of free speech – it is of vilification and the endorsement of terror.

“Some of these extreme groups are crossing the line.”

The protest, to take place on Thursday afternoon, is in response to student activists camping out at Australian campuses, including at the University of Melbourne.

Thursday will mark the eighth day members of Uni Melb for Palestine have camped out on the campus’ south lawn.

Students at the University of Sydney, University of Queensland and Australian National University are also holding their own camps.

Australian Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni has shown his support for the Melbourne outfit by attending and giving a speech, and in Sydney, Greens Deputy Leader Mehreen Faruqi also addressed students camped out.

The new wave of protests take inspiration from university encampments across the United States, which on Wednesday saw a heavy police presence descend on Columbia University to forcibly clear protesters out.

Uni Melb for Palestine issued a warning to students ahead of the Jewish student-led protest to “not engage with agitators or Zionists at all” and to “not divulge information/details of comrades to cops or security”.

The group are hosting a “teach in” event which will include speeches from Melbourne Law School senior research fellow Dr Jordana Silverstein and a Jewish anti-Zionist student who will discuss “Palestinian liberation from an anti-Zionist Jewish perspective”.

Zionist Federation of Australia chief executive officer Alon Cassuto said he was concerned about the welfare of Jewish students on campus and voiced his support for the demonstration.

“We warned universities last year about the manifestations of antisemitism on campuses, but the situation has gotten worse since that time,” Mr Cassuto said.

“There has been a collective absence of leadership, with appalling and intimidatory behaviour being ignored in the hope that it will go away. Instead, in the face of inaction, it’s gotten worse.”

He claimed that Jewish students are scared to complain “for fear their marks will be affected” which has resulted them to stay away from campus.

“Societal cohesion requires community and political leaders to publicly and strongly call out and push back on those seeking to undermine that cohesion,” the ZFA leader said.

“Anti-Semitism under the guise of political discourse is still antisemitism. We must be vigilant and clear in our opposition to any form of hate on our campuses.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/jewish-students-to-rally-at-university-of-melbourne/news-story/6d1e78991d4e8db44926ae18c92dc8b6

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Top French university loses regional funding over pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protests

The Paris region authority sparked controversy Tuesday by temporarily suspending funding for Sciences Po, one of the country’s most prestigious universities, after it was rocked by tense pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel demonstrations.

“I have decided to suspend all regional funding for Sciences Po until calm and security have been restored at the school,” Valerie Pecresse, the right-wing head of the greater Paris Ile-de-France region, said on social media on Monday.

She took aim at “a minority of radicalized people calling for antisemitic hatred” and accused hard-left politicians of seeking to exploit the tensions.

Regional support for the Paris-based university includes 1 million euros ($1.07 million) earmarked for 2024, a member of Pecresse’s team told AFP.

On Tuesday, the university’s acting administrator, Jean Basseres, said he regretted the decision.

“The Ile-de-France region is an essential partner of Sciences Po, and I wish to maintain dialogue on the position expressed by Mrs. Pecresse,” he told French daily Le Monde in an interview.

In an echo of tense demonstrations rocking many top United States universities, students at Sciences Po have staged a number of protests, with some students furious over the Israel-Hamas war and ensuing humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

France is home to the world’s largest Jewish population after Israel and the US, as well as Europe’s biggest Muslim community.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-french-university-loses-regional-funding-over-pro-palestinian-protests/

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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

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

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The Biden Administration Has Redefined ‘Sex.’ What Does That Mean for Schools?

The Biden administration now says that “sex” means “gender identity.” So, what does this mean for K-12 teachers?

In a new regulation released last week, the Biden administration changed the definition of “sex” in a crucial civil rights law that was originally designed to protect women. Title IX of the Civil Rights Act says that schools cannot discriminate against individuals based on sex, which gave women better access to higher education and athletics.

But the Biden administration has swapped “sex” for “gender,” which will allow biological males access to females’ bathrooms, locker rooms, sports competitions, etc.

K-12 educators around the country are wondering what to do next, because this rule would have major implications for school facilities and athletic teams.

Washington wants schools to change their harassment policies, too, because the new rule says individuals could face charges of harassment if they address someone according to his or her sex instead of “gender” choice.

Our advice to educators: Wait.

The Biden administration’s rule violates numerous administrative laws and constitutional free-speech provisions, not to mention women’s civil rights. The rule goes into effect Aug. 1, and we forecast a long, hot summer of litigation that will stall and should ultimately overturn this rule.

The rule violates state laws that protect women’s athletics and prohibit men from competing in women’s sports. Louisiana Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley has already issued a letter to school officials in his state saying the rule violates their state’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which keeps single-sex sports just that—for individuals of one sex to compete with each other: girls’ soccer for girls, boys’ basketball for boys, as schools have operated for generations.

“This rule runs contradictory to the entire foundation of Title IX,” Brumley wrote to teachers and principals. “The Title IX rule changes recklessly endanger students and seek to dismantle equal opportunities for females.” The lead education officials of Oklahoma and South Carolina have sent similar letters to educators in their states.

The rule also ignores research that finds health professionals do not know enough about the long-term effects of drugs and medicines being used to alter human bodies, including the biological functions of children. Earlier this month, England’s National Health Service released a report that the Times of London called “the world’s biggest review into the contested field of transgender health care.”

The release, called the Cass Report, found that scientists “have no good evidence” on the long-term outcomes from puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and surgeries that alter reproductive organs.

Young people in particular may feel “an urgency to transition,” the Cass Report said, but “young adults looking back at their younger selves would often advise slowing down.” The report’s authors said the effects of so-called gender interventions “needs to be better understood.”

The Independent Women’s Forum, an advocacy organization, has already announced its intent to sue the administration. The new rule “turns Title IX on its head through extra-statutory regulations,” the group said in a news release.

Public opinion sides with Brumley, the Cass Report, and the Independent Women’s Forum. A 2023 survey of Americans found that 55% of respondents said it is “morally wrong” to change your gender, an increase of 4 percentage points from 2021. In the same survey, 69% of Americans said that “transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that conform with their birth gender.”

Americans do not like watching videos on social media of middle-school girls getting thrown down by a boy in a basketball game or of a high school girl having her teeth knocked out while playing field hockey. Nor do any parents want their daughters to share a locker room with a boy.

The Biden administration is violating civil rights law and ignoring research and public opinion. School officials would do well to wait before changing school rules—both to see what happens in court and to protect students and teachers from this harmful policy.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/27/biden-administration-has-redefined-sex-what-does-that-mean-schools/

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The Problem Is Academia

The explosion of violent and shockingly antisemitic protests on college campuses is just the latest in a series of self-inflicted black eyes for higher education in the United States. In March last year, a group of students at Stanford Law School shut down a talk by federal Judge Kyle Duncan, screaming vulgar epithets and refusing to allow him to speak.

In October, the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania embarrassed themselves in congressional hearings convened to ask about combating antisemitism on their campuses. Penn President Liz Magill resigned immediately thereafter. Harvard’s President Claudine Gay survived that controversy but resigned a few weeks later when multiple instances of plagiarism in her research were exposed.

This week, protests have erupted not only at Ivy League schools like Columbia, Harvard and Brown but the University of Southern California, the University of Michigan, the University of Texas, Emory University and elsewhere, causing enormous disruption. Jewish students at Columbia left campus, after which the administration announced that classes will be hybrid (in-person and virtual) for the remainder of the semester. USC has canceled its public commencement ceremony. Dozens have been arrested on multiple campuses.

Americans are understandably asking, what’s the problem in academia?

I’ve worked as a professor and administrator at multiple institutions since 1991. Despite its historic strengths (and there are many), there is a great deal wrong with our system of higher education. A comprehensive list is impossible given space constraints, but here are some issues that have contributed to the damaged culture in academia.

— Academia is dominated by one political perspective. A 2017 article from Inside Higher Ed cited a study showing that just over 9% of faculty surveyed identified as “conservative.” A more recent article from the American Institute for Economic Research points out that this trend has worsened in the past few years, with the number of faculty who identify as “far left” more than doubling. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the disciplines where leftist ideology is most monolithic — up to 80% — are the humanities and social sciences; subjects all students are exposed to, regardless of their majors.

— Standards for publication contribute to the proliferation of nonsense. Faculty are required to publish significantly more than was the case decades ago. Candidates for tenure are evaluated not only for publishing in “A” journals but for the number of times their work is cited by other scholars. While this can demonstrate serious and groundbreaking work, it also incentivizes taking radical or inflammatory positions for the sake of getting attention. (On the internet, this is called “clickbait.” We’ll call this practice “citebait.”)

In 2018, scholars Peter Boghossian, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay revealed another consequence of the “publish — a lot — or perish” culture. The three crafted multiple papers with deliberately absurd theses — calling for “feminist astrology” or arguing for the existence of “rape culture” in dog parks — and several were accepted for publication. (In a disturbing display of defensive embarrassment, Boghossian’s employer, Portland State, accused him of “academic fraud” and commenced a disciplinary investigation. He resigned in protest.)

— Research is captured by politics and money. When headlines proclaim that “most researchers agree,” readers may assume scientists with competing ideas duked it out, and the theory with the most proof prevailed. That isn’t necessarily true. A 2019 article in medical news journal Stat revealed that research into alternative theories about the causes of Alzheimer’s was thwarted by “experts” who didn’t want their theories challenged: Scholars’ papers weren’t published, their grant applications were rejected, speaking engagements were denied, faculty candidates were denied tenure. This has happened in other disciplines as well, including nutrition, climate change and gender dysphoria. Dissenters from the orthodoxy are dealt with harshly.

— Tenure is a big part of the problem. The “third rail” in any discussion about academic policies, tenure is supposed to promote diversity of viewpoints, encourage scholarly exploration and protect faculty from retaliation. In practice, however, as noted above, it has contributed to publishing “churn” and been used as a weapon against scholars whose work challenges or repudiates prevailing viewpoints.

It has also insulated faculty who espouse societally destructive ideologies from any accountability. It’s one thing to posit a controversial theory of particle physics and be proven wrong. It’s altogether different to defend a political philosophy like Marxism — as many professors continue to do. By way of comparison, if a company or industry produced a product that killed 100 million people, it’s safe to say there would be some blowback. Why should faculty be able to preach doctrines like collectivism, moral relativism or the nonexistence of truth without being called to account for the consequences?

Tenure also gives arguably undeserved credibility to “theories” that often amount to little more than the authors’ worldviews. Those viewpoints make their way into corporate boardrooms, government regulations and K-12 education policies, foisted onto an unsuspecting public that has had little to no opportunity to evaluate their merits.

Even before last year’s congressional hearings or the protests about the Israel-Hamas war, the constant drumbeat of academic scandals (Varsity Blues, sexual assault at Michigan State, skyrocketing tuition) had already produced calls for more oversight. Here in Indiana, our governor signed a bill last month designed to promote “intellectual diversity” and “free inquiry,” and changing the criteria for tenure at our public universities.

Faculty are concerned that such oversight could be abused. But the universal lesson here is to govern yourself or be governed. Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson opined in an interview earlier this year that higher education “cannot be reformed from within.” Whether or not he’s right, American colleges and universities have for decades hidden behind “academic freedom” when confronted with the socially destructive behavior that seems to be the aftermath of terrible ideologies. The general public has grown weary of it.

In academia, as elsewhere, a few bad apples create problems for everyone else. Most doctors don’t commit malpractice, most teachers don’t sleep with their students, most business owners don’t commit fraud. Similarly, most faculty are people with deep interest in their subject matter and sincere concern for the education and well-being of the college students they teach. But, unlike the other professions noted above, ours has not been willing to root out the bad actors — or indeed had any real mechanism for doing so.

If we don’t do it ourselves, it will be done for us.

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/106322-the-problem-is-academia-2024-04-26

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Sydney University pro-Palestine camp shows topsy-turvy world of warriors for radical chic

Like children with matches in a summer bushland tinderbox, the pro-Palestinian protesters at our universities seem to have no idea about the lethal forces that are their playthings. Islamist extremism, anti-Semitism, Arab grievance, Jewish defiance, great power politics and social cohesion in Western liberal democracies like our own are all in the mix.

These are tensions not easily grasped or resolved by undergraduates looking for the revolutionary cause of their era. When they bandy around terms like “Israeli genocide” and “apartheid state” or talk about a colonial power usurping the rights of an Indigenous people you know that facts, history and context have no place in their considerations.

Politicians of the left in the US, Britain and here do little to chastise or correct them because they are in the ugly electoral game of courting the ever-growing Muslim vote, holding off ever more radical leftist rivals, and appealing to the young and impressionable. National values and interests play second fiddle to the spineless mathematics of political power.

At Columbia University in New York City, which has led the way in what has become a global campus campaign, Jewish students this month were advised to stay away from classes, and now the whole university has switched to a remote learning model. Even one pro-Palestinian protester, Linnia Norton, seemed shocked at the hatred they had unleashed, telling a reporter; “There were people outside of campus one time with signs that said, ‘Death to all Jews’ – that is awful and nobody should be having to experience that on their campus.”

The Students for Palestine protesters at the University of Sydney are unashamedly derivative, posting on Instagram that they have been “greatly inspired” by the movement at Columbia. They have chanted “Intifada, intifada”, cheering on Palestinian armed uprisings that have visited terrorism on Israel repeatedly since the 1980s, taking thousands of innocent lives.

Whatever your view of Palestinian aspirations and the Israeli government, no rational approach to this issue should ignore the human reality. It seems incomprehensible that these privileged students could see the Hamas atrocities of October 7 last year and the horrible war they were designed to trigger and use those events not to condemn and campaign against Hamas but to advocate the terror group’s agenda.

On Anzac Day, after bathing in the warm and reassuring camaraderie of the dawn service at Bondi, I went to the Sydney University students’ “occupation” site to see for myself. From a distance, the whole thing looked like topsy-turvy world to me. These are students who promote and enjoy sexual liberation, gender equality, embracing of gays, bisexuals and transgender people, imbibing of alcohol, and no doubt free expression, democracy and individual rights; how could they offer comfort to the Islamist extremist terror group Hamas, which would readily throw them off a rooftop on any of those counts?

And yes, like topsy-turvy world, this mob inverts logic and consistency. This is a movement that deliberately targeted Anzac Day for “glorification of war” while it refuses to condemn Hamas for instigating and continuing a war with unspeakable barbarity against civ­il­ians. The protesters do not even denounce Hamas for the way it deliberately triggered war: slaughtering 1200 people, including babies, women, teenagers and the elderly, while taking nearly 250 hostages for raping, torture and murder, with about 130 unaccounted for more than six months on.

As I walked into Sydney’s tent city I saw a sign scrawled on the walkway declaring this was the “Gaza camp”. There were Palestinian flags, tents emblazoned with “From the river to the sea” (the obliteration of Israel as a slogan), a stand for Socialist Alternative with a copy of Introducing Marxism on display, and a lot of young people milling about in Palestinian keffiyeh – clearly this lot had skipped the unit on cultural appropriation.

Unusually for people running a demonstration, they were very shy. I asked two women why they had “from the river to the sea” on their tents and they denied knowledge or responsibility for the tent daubing – I am certain if I had stuck around they would have denied it three times before the cock crowed.

Another group of students told me they would speak with the ABC or SBS but not with The Australian, and when I asked them why I saw no posters or banners calling for the release of hostages they broke eye contact and scattered without response.

When the protesters gathered for an open-air meeting, in keeping with their “people’s movement” schtick, they said they could not speak freely while I was watching and asked me to leave. Before leaving I posed the hostage question again – they offered no answer.

Why are the hostages conscientiously unremembered as a political inconvenience? Like the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, these protesters want to wipe away October 7.

It troubles me that young students can turn their backs on a family such as the Bibas family. I witnessed videoed brutality and terror from October 7 that I would dearly love to unsee, but a video of the Bibas family, without overt violence, haunts me like no other, and should haunt the free world.

On the morning of October 7 last year at kibbutz Nir Oz, Shiri Bibas, 32, is seen holding her two beautiful red-haired boys, Kfir, 9 months, and Ariel, 4. (We’ve since learned Shiri’s husband Yarden had been dragged off bleeding from the head and is believed to be dead; Shiri’s parents later were found murdered). In the video Shiri appears to be uninjured but is surrounded by Hamas terrorists telling her what to do and where to go, and she is confused and terrified, clutching her boys. Her blameless terror and fear for her boys are a violation of humanity.

This mother and her boys remain unaccounted for, with some reports suggesting they were alive early this year, and Hamas claiming they were killed later by Israeli attacks. So cowardly and depraved is this abomination that the best we can hold any slim hope for is that this woman and her two boys somehow have endured almost seven months of horror.

The only person at the university who would engage in a meaningful discussion with me was Josh Lees. He is not a Sydney University student but clearly had a leadership role at the camp.

Lees is an organiser of the Palestinian Action Group and a writer for Red Flag, the newspaper and website of Socialist Alternative which claims to be the nation’s “largest Marxist revolutionary group”. So much for student autonomy.

“What’s your view of Hamas?” I asked Lees. “It’s not about Hamas, we’re opposing the genocide in Gaza,” he diverted.

And so it went, repeatedly, with this professional activist refusing to condemn Hamas or its bloodcurdling terrorism. After five unsuccessful attempts for a view on Hamas I switched to asking about his view of what Hamas did on October 7. “My view is that nothing that happened on October 7 can possibly justify a genocide that’s been taking place,” he said.

I persisted, suggesting the point was not what the events did or did not justify but more simply, did he have a view about 1200 people massacred and up to 250 taken hostage. “You wanna ask me about something that happened six-and-a-half months ago?” he deflected.

“One human being to another,” I implored. “Do you have no view about what happened on October 7?” Silence. “You can’t find it in your heart to condemn the atrocity that occurred on October 7?” Nothing.

Eventually he muttered in rhetorical tone, “Israel can defend itself, but the Palestinians can’t?!” This was a sickening characterisation of the October 7 bloodlust as self-defence.

The conversation was abhorrent and pointless. Pushed on hostages Lees claimed Israel had 10,000 hostages – facts do not matter on this campus.

These protests at some of our most prestigious universities are deeply disturbing and metastasising across our public debate. Sydney University trumpets three values of “trust, accountability and excellence” and it champions diversity, yet it tolerates a protest demonising Jews and Israel, and encouraging armed uprising by Islamist terrorists against a liberal democracy.

This, while the Islamist extremist threat re-emerges on our shores, pointed among the young. And the type of Islamist society promoted by Hamas and like-minded groups is the most brutally intolerant version known to humankind – anathema to the claimed values of any university or Western democracy.

Columbia University proclaims its mission cannot succeed without “thoughtful, rigorous debate” that is “free of bigotry, intimidation and harassment”. But right now Jewish students and staff are being physically intimidated and blocked from attending classes, so that most are too fearful to attend.

The Sydney students chant “Intifada” and “Revolution” on social media and claim Israel is “murdering tens of thousands of people”.

The university says it wants all its students to be able to express their views and it has beefed up security as a precaution – vice-chancellor Mark Scott seems to have switched from the staff-run collective model at the ABC to a student-run collective on campus.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/sydney-university-propalestine-camp-shows-topsyturvy-world-of-warriors-for-radical-chic/news-story/65f07cfffaa04ed9b77c85106d2c10c8

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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

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

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What Lies Behind Student Pro-Hamas, Anti-Israel, and Anti-Semitic Uprisings?

It is a modernized version of Marxism, with its hate-based need for oppressors and the oppressed

The sudden uprising of university students across North America in support of Hamas and allegedly about the welfare of Palestinians does not result, for most students, from close ties with people on the other side of the world.

Of course, there is in North America a small minority of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students who are strong advocates based on their ethnicity and religion. But the vast number of student protesters have no such personal ties. Why have they set aside their studies to take up activism?

We know that the reason for the uprising is not that the student activists have studied deeply the history and politics of the Middle East, the history and theology of Islam and Judaism, and how international relations more broadly influence the region. Few of the students are majoring or minoring in Middle Eastern history and current affairs, Islamic history and theology, or Jewish history and theology. We know because of the many students chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free [of Jews],” a large number cannot name either the river or the sea. How many of the students could identify Israel or Gaza on a map is uncertain.

If ties to or knowledge of the region are not behind the fevered advocacy for Hamas, what is? One factor that is undeniable is the highly organized, well-funded Muslim lobby, sponsors of Students for Justice in Palestine, and other Palestine and Islam advocacy groups, which have branches in universities across the land. Their partisanship and relentless lobbying have no doubt influenced student opinion to some degree. However, most students do not identify as Palestinian and Muslim, so their engagement on these bases is not strong. Something else must be at work.

By far, the dominant ideology in universities is the far leftist conception of “social justice,” generally defined and implemented as “diversity, equity, inclusion.” This is not a student invention but a policy imposed from the highest level, the Biden administration in the United States and the Trudeau government in Canada. Universities have had this far left ideology and its implementation imposed on them by government fiat. But most universities were far from reluctant, because almost all academic staff and administration officials were children or grandchildren of the 1960s’ cultural revolution, who either self-identified as Marxists or accepted Marxist analyses and policies.

“Social justice” is based on Marxist class conflict analysis. In this view, society is not many individuals and groups competing and cooperating over space and time, with relationships changing according to circumstances. Rather, the only important relationships in society are based on the conflict between classes, one class being the oppressor and exploiter, the other class being the exploited and oppressed victim. Classical Marxism framed class conflict in terms of economic classes, but that formulation never took hold in North America. The new, revised North American Marxism can be labeled “cultural Marxism,” because it identifies classes as based in sex, race, sexuality, ability, ethnicity, and religion. What is critical is that the classes of oppressors and victims be identified.

In this cultural Marxist view, males made up an exploiter class, “the patriarchy,” while females were deemed to make up an exploited victim class. Likewise, the black, brown, and indigenous races, “BIPOC,” were oppressed and exploited races, and evil “whites,” remarkably including Asians and Jews, made up the oppressor class. Similarly, “cis” heterosexuals were deemed to be oppressors of LGBT. The oppressor classes are charged with systemic prejudice and discrimination against the victim classes. In this scheme, all individual differences of members within these so-called “classes” are erased.

The evidence supporting this scheme is stunningly slim. Not only have the laws supporting prejudice and discrimination been eliminated, but new laws forbidding prejudice and discrimination have been passed and implemented and, by now, have long been on the books. The alleged evidence put forward by activists as decisive is disparate results in education, income, and office. If any category is not represented at the level of its percentage of the general population, that is taken as proof of prejudice and discrimination. The many other possible reasons for statistical disparities—differences in preferences and choices, differences in motivation and achievement, differences in capabilities—are ignored or denied in spite of the overwhelming evidence of the impact of these factors. The influence of regional, local, and ethnic culture is totally disregarded.

“Social justice” is put into practice under the labels “diversity, equity, inclusion,” which do not mean what they seem to at first appearance. For example, “diversity” means only members of oppressed classes, not men, not whites, not “cis” heterosexuals, and so these people are excluded, not “included.” Ads for university positions today specify only BIPOC or LGBT or those with a disability; heterosexual white males without disabilities are excluded from consideration. For example, females dominate universities as the overwhelming majority among students, professors, and administrators. Did you notice that the Ivy League universities in the news, because of student uprisings, all have female presidents?

As well, do not imagine that “diversity” in universities means diversity of opinion and thought; in fact views other than “social justice” and DEI are forbidden, and expressing such thoughts can result in punishment or banishment. DEI officers and offices, of which most universities have many at every level, act as political commissars suppressing ideological dissent through guidance and imposing penalties.

“Equity” is another matter entirely. It means the same results for everyone. This is the extreme ideal of Marxism: absolute equality. So any situation that produces a disparity of results is ipso facto deemed illegitimate. And here is the justification: All disparities are regarded as the result of prejudice and discrimination. So the traditional criteria of academic life in particular and public life in the West—achievement and merit—must be disregarded as racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and Islamophobic. This explains the puzzling classing of Asians and Jews as “white,” for the first time ever. Asians and Jews are high achieving, even more so than whites, and in the “social justice” view, that must be the result of their imposition of racism, sexism, etcetera, etcetera. The policy result is that programs aimed at high achievement, e.g., advanced courses in math and science, must be terminated, and measures of achievement, such as SAT and GRE tests, must be deemed racist, and so on, and terminated.

What does all of this have to do with Israel? Well, if Jews are white oppressors, then Israel must be also. The “social justice” analysis of the Israel-Palestine conflict is that Israelis (but presumably not the many Israeli Arab Muslims and Christians) are white oppressors, and the Palestinian Arabs are BIPOC. Has anyone who has been to Israel and seen the two populations said this? The reality is that there is great racial overlap in the two populations: half of Israelis were from Jewish populations in Arab countries where they lived for many centuries before being forcibly expelled, and the genetics of the two populations overlap considerably. This transfer of American race obsession to the Israel-Palestinian conflict is absurd. And this is not even to consider the Arab slave raiding in Africa and their disdain for their black slaves.

The other Marxist claim, Leninist this time, is that Israeli Jews are imperialists who have colonized the indigenous Arab Palestinians. Canadian professors are big on this alleged colonial oppression of indigenous peoples. One of my McGill colleagues was much loved by students for his championing of indigenous Canadian “First Nations” against the wicked European invaders who built Canada. (The history of slavery practiced by the indigenous “First Nations” is not told as part of this story.)

My colleague was also a great champion of the “indigenous” Palestinians. When I suggested that the Jews were the indigenous population, he refuted that by saying that “indigenous” means who was there when Westerners arrived! I asked if the Romans counted as “Western,” because when the Romans invaded the Holy Land some decades BC, there were only Jews there. The Romans fought the Jews and finally defeated them after a century and a half, exiling many and changing the name of the country to Syria Palestina, so they did not have to hear Jewish place names, such as Judea and Samaria. No, my colleague said, the Jews just left to find trading opportunities. (Jews seeking money, of course.) In reality, the “indigenous” Arabs first came to the Holy Land in the seventh century AD as Muslim invaders from Arabia, as the initial step in their conquest of the great Islamic Empire. Muslim theology and policy has always been Islamic supremacism, with non-Muslims treated as subordinates, slaves, or worse.

The campus uprisings do not concern themselves with historical facts. It is clear (to them) who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, and morality means supporting the good guys and attacking the bad guys. Repeatedly, we have heard, “We are Hamas,” “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free,” “Genocide in Gaza,” “Israel go to hell,” “The only solution is intifada revolution,” and “10,000 more October the 7th.” To the demonstrators, Israel is the evil, racist oppressor of innocent Gazans and Palestinians. So, too, with Jews, who are evil oppressors of BIPOC, LGBT, women, the disabled, and Muslims generally. Israel is the Jew of nations, and Jews are the individual manifestations of Israel. That is why we also hear “Zionist pigs,” “get off of campus,” and “go back to Poland.”

Many commentators have lamented that demonstrating students are not in class, and others are not allowed to go to class. But quiet campuses with students learning are not the solution; they are the problem. For what almost all universities teach is cultural Marxism, which is as well the official university policy. The students have not failed to learn; they have learned too well the false and destructive lessons of “social justice” and DEI. The students have been corrupted in corrupt universities, which have abandoned the search for truth in favor of the Marxist revolution.

This does not end with Israel, Palestine, and the Jews. America, Canada, the West, capitalism, democracy, and individual freedom are all in the crosshairs of Marxism and Islamic supremacism. Today, the red-green alliance controls North American universities. Students are chanting “Death to America.” Be warned.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/what-lies-behind-student-pro-hamas-anti-israel-and-antisemitic-uprisings-5637961

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Student Sues Toronto Metropolitan University for ‘Pervasive Antisemitism’

The statement of claim filed on April 23 says that Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) has had “ongoing and pervasive antisemitism” toward Jewish students, staff, and faculty since Oct. 7, 2023, the day that Hamas terrorists attacked Israel, leading to an escalation in tensions and military fighting in the area.

The student, Nicole Szweras, has Israeli citizenship and her mother was born there, according to the statement.

“Israel is a fundamental part of her Jewish identity, like so many Jewish people throughout the world,” the court document says.

While listing several complaints to make the case that the school has been inactive in the face of anti-Semitic actions on campus, the claim says TMU has a contractual obligation to provide a safe space for students to complete their studies.

“TMU’s failure to apply, or its inadequate application of, its own policies and procedures expressly prohibiting such conduct has led to a poisoned antisemitic learning and working environment for the Plaintiff,” the document says. “TMU’s actions and inaction have breached duties of care owing to, breached its contract with, and have discriminated against the Plaintiff.”

Some of the concerns raised by Ms. Szweras include inflammatory social media posts and events by TMU groups and organizations funded by the student union.

The document notes that the school issued two statements in the weeks following the Hamas attack, saying there would be no tolerance of anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim rhetoric or racism but failed to define what that entailed.

“It quickly became apparent that such statements were simply token platitudes that were not acted upon, ineffectually acted upon, or unequally acted upon by TMU,” the statement said.

Ms. Szweras said that some anti-Semitic slogans became commonplace around the school, including “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and the use of the word “Intifada.”

“TMU is fully aware that these Antisemitic Violence-Inciting Slogans are repeated by TMU community members in rallies, posters, signs, and graffiti throughout TMU and in TMU buildings,” the court document said, claiming that “no meaningful or effective actions have been taken by TMU” regarding the slogans since Oct. 7, 2023.

The lawsuit includes examples of letters signed by students or staff that, among other things, claim Israel has no right to exist, and stand in solidarity with “all forms of resistance,” including the Oct. 7 attack. Jewish students also expressed concern over a law professor at the school who “berated the State of Israel, to the point that several Jewish students left the class in tears.”

Ms. Szweras claims in her lawsuit that TMU has done nothing to curb these actions on campus.

In one instance, a military-style knife was left on the lectern of a Jewish contract lecturer, the statement of claim says. TMU’s alleged inaction led to the instructor requesting not to hold in-person classes and exams.

Ms. Szweras said when she and others held a silent protest, called the Silent Protest for Peace & Humanity on campus, they were surrounded by other students who attempted to intimidate them, while security did nothing to stop the behaviour.

“One of the accosting TMU students was heard saying ‘next time on campus you won’t be together’ – a clear threat to the participants’ safety,” the statement of claim says.

“TMU security was needed to escort Nikki [Nicole Szweras] and the other participating students to the Hillel office while the harassing TMU students followed.”

On Nov. 29, 2023, at a protest held on TMU, someone displayed a swastika on a sign. While TMU issued a statement about the incident saying they asked the Toronto Police to investigate the incident, and were investigating it themselves, Ms. Szweras says that no update has been provided.
“Without such update to the TMU community, Nikki and other Jewish TMU community members she is aware of were left with the continued unmistakable impression that no action was to be taken by TMU in this regard other than mere platitudes.”

The document says that the lack of follow-up has “fostered an atmosphere of antisemitism and fear” for Jewish TMU community members.

Other examples listed in the claim include a rally in March 2024 where TMU students were walking around campus with signs that said “Zionism Off Our Campus.”

The statement says Ms. Szweras and other Jewish members at TMU saw this as a call for Jews to be removed from campus, and are unaware of any action TMU took with regard to the incident.

“This incident deeply affected Nikki, leading her to question her place in the world that tolerates this rhetoric,” the statement of claim said.

She said that when political statements were posted in the workplace, Ms.Szweras and her friends felt “ostracized” and eventually, “Student-Staff simply ignored Nikki altogether.”

Around Nov. 16, 2023, a defamatory email about Ms. Szweras was circulated among other student-staff in the area where she worked, the document says. However, it was not emailed to her directly, her statement says.

“Nikki had to ask TMU about the complaint as TMU did not advise her of it. In response, TMU advised Nikki that they were investigating the complaint, but TMU refused (at any point in time) to tell Nikki what the substance of the allegations in the complaint were – violating the TMU Conduct Policies.”

The situation made Ms. Szweras uncomfortable and she told TMU, who said she did not have to return to work and they would still pay her, the statement says.

She later saw a social media post celebrating the individual who sent the complaint email as “best employee,” the statement says.

TMU wrote to Ms. Szweras on Dec. 6, 2023, indicating it had determined the incident was one of differing political views between co-workers, according to the document.

“Nikki was surprised because at no time had TMU ever asked Nikki what her political opinions were or told Nikki how TMU surmised what her opinions were. Again, actions or opinions were being projected on to Nikki because she is Jewish – this time by TMU.”

She raised these concerns during a Dec. 11 meeting with TMU staff, but said that no action was taken by the university.

In January 2024, following the December break from school, Ms. Szweras noticed that she was not scheduled to work, but other co-workers had been scheduled, the statement says. She said that she then had her access to the online work schedule revoked.

As a result of her experience, Ms. Szweras says in her claim that she gets anxious when she has to go to campus and tries to avoid it. She also says her academic work has suffered, and she takes care not to wear or display any Israeli-identifying objects, including removing stickers from her laptop.

“The environment and the incidents described above have had a profoundly negative impact on Nikki’s dignity, mental health, and wellbeing,” the statement says.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/student-sues-toronto-metropolitan-university-for-pervasive-antisemitism-5638962

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Columbia University begins suspending Nazi activists after they refused to disband from New York campus

Columbia University has begun suspending pro-Palestinian activists after they refused to disband an encampment of tents on its New York campus, after the Ivy League school declared a stalemate in talks seeking to end the polarising protest.

University president Nemat Minouche Shafik said in a statement that days of negotiations between student organisers and academic leaders had failed to persuade demonstrators to dismantle the dozens of tents they set up to express opposition to Israel's war in Gaza.

The university sent protesters a letter on Monday morning warning students who did not vacate the encampment by 2pm (local time), they would need to sign a form acknowledging their participation would result in suspension and be ineligible to complete the semester in good standing.

"We have begun suspending students as part of this next phase of our efforts to ensure safety on our campus," said Ben Chang, a university spokesperson, at a briefing on Monday evening.

In an earlier statement, Dr Shafik said Columbia University would not divest assets that support Israel's military, a key demand of the protesters. Instead, she offered to invest in health and education in Gaza and to make Columbia's direct investment holdings more transparent.

Protesters have vowed to keep their encampment on the Manhattan campus until Columbia meets three demands: divestment, transparency in university finances and amnesty for students and faculty disciplined for their part in the protests.

Pro-Palestine protests sweep US colleges

Student protests in the US over the war in Gaza intensify and expand, with a number of encampments now in place at colleges including Columbia, Yale, and New York University.

"These repulsive scare tactics mean nothing compared to the deaths of over 34,000 Palestinians. We will not move until Columbia meets our demands or we are moved by force," leaders of the Columbia Student Apartheid Divest coalition said in a statement read at a news conference following the deadline.

Hundreds of demonstrators, many wearing traditional Palestinian keffiyeh scarves, marched in circles around the exterior of the encampment chanting, "Disclose! Divest! We will not stop, we will not rest."

Dr Shafik faced an outcry from many students, faculty and outside observers for summoning New York City police two weeks ago to dismantle the encampment.

Even though more than 100 arrests were made last week, students restored the encampment on a hedge-lined lawn of the university grounds within days.

Since then, students at dozens of campuses across the US have set up similar encampments to demonstrate their anger over the Israeli operation in Gaza and the perceived complicity of their schools in it.

The pro-Palestinian rallies have sparked intense campus debate over where school officials should draw the line between freedom of expression and hate speech.

Some pro-Israel counter-demonstrators have accused the other side of engaging in anti-Semitism.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-30/columbia-university-suspends-students-over-pro-palestine-protest/103783458

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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

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

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Communist Pro-Gaza Students Chase Jacob Rees-Mogg After Speech at Cardiff University

Conservative MP Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg was hounded by student protesters waving communist and Palestinian flags after giving a speech at Cardiff University on Friday evening.

The former minister was escorted to a vehicle by a group of security guards, with protesters shouting, drumming, and pressing placards against the window, footage shared on social media show.

The protest was organised by socialist Welsh Underground Network and societies including Cardiff Communists, Socialist Students, Lecturers Against Genocide, and Cardiff Geen Soc.

MPs criticised the protesters, saying their behaviour was “unacceptable” and “shrill intimidatory idiocy.”

Sir Jacob was invited to Cardiff University by the college’s Conservative and Unionist Association.

Following the event, he was filmed being bundled into a security vehicle, as one protester draped himself over the car’s bonnet before being pulled away by guards.

Protesters were filmed waving placards, a Palestinian flag, and two Revolutionary Communist Party flags.

They were also shouting with megaphones and drumming. One protester could be heard shouting “Tory [expletive].”

Ahead of the event, Cardiff Communists shared a poster on Instagram, calling on students to “unite against imperialist politicians” on campus.

Welsh Underground Network said it demands that “no politicians be allowed to speak on campus for the wellbeing of all students and faculty” in a poster shared on X, formerly Twitter.

After the incident, the group wrote that protesters had “managed to block the doors, shutting them inside for several houes [sic],” and doubled down on their hostility against Sir Jacob.

“Mogg left under a barrage of our anger, anger at his zionism, anger at his cruelty to the working class, anger at his very existence,” the X post reads.

The group added, “No zionist politician should be able to walk our streets in peace, they shouldn’t be able to open their mouths without being shouted down.”

Commenting on the protest, Sir Jacob said, “It was a legitimate and peaceful if noisy protest.

“The Cardiff University security team was exemplary in allowing a lawful protest while keeping everyone safe.

“Universities ought to be bastions of free speech and as both the protesters and I were able to give our views without fear or intimidation the proper traditions of adversarial debate were upheld.”

Conservative Party chairman Richard Holden posted on X that he’s sure Sir Jacob “will have taken it in his stride but no elected politician should have to put up with this shrill intimidatory idiocy.”

Jo Stevens, Labour’s shadow Welsh secretary, said she’s “concerned by footage of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s treatment by protesters in Cardiff.

“I disagree with him on almost everything, but we cannot accept a culture of intimidation in our politics,” she said.

“The right to lawful protest is sacrosanct, but harassment and intimidation is unacceptable.”

The incident came after the Office for Students published draft free speech guidance for universities on what they should and should not do.

Gearing up for its new power to police free speech on campus, the OfS has warned universities against cancelling speaking events, and said they should resist pressure to fire or penalise staff or students over their speech and provide timely support to them.

According to the Cambridge Independent, The new Revolutionary Communist Party was launched across the UK on April 6.

The Leninist party also said on Thursday that it’s “organising on campuses across the country” to “kick capitalism out of education.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/communist-pro-gaza-students-chase-jacob-rees-mogg-after-speech-at-cardiff-university-5638847?ea_src=frontpage&ea_med=world-left-4

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New York School Spending Led All US by Record Margin in 2021-22

Public elementary and secondary school spending in New York hit a new record high of $29,873 per pupil in 2021-22, according to the Census Bureau’s latest annual school finance data—inching closer to fully twice the national average of $15,633 amid a significant post-pandemic decline in pupil performance.

Inflated by a massive increase in state “foundation aid,” New York’s preK-12 per-pupil spending was up $3,302, or 12.4 percent, which was the biggest increase of any state in dollar terms. In percentage terms, New York’s increase ranked fifth highest in a year when total U.S. per-pupil spending rose 8.9 percent, which the Census Bureau described as the largest nationwide percentage increase in 20 years.

The education spending gap between the Empire State and the rest of the country has more than quadrupled since 2000, as shown below.

With total public school enrollment sinking to levels unseen since the early 1950s, New York’s per-pupil spending is sure to rise comfortably above $30,000 in 2022-23. New York’s latest school property tax report cards, covering districts outside the state’s five largest cities, point to spending levels of nearly $32,000 per pupil in 2023-24.

The Census Bureau’s annual Elementary and Secondary Education Finance data for 2021-22 reflect a continuation of several long-standing patterns in New York school spending as compared to education finances in other states:

New York’s high spending level was driven primarily by instructional salaries and benefits—which, at $20,533 per pupil, were 120 percent above the national average of $9,348, the census data show. New York’s spending in this category (i.e., money in the classroom) exceeded the total per-pupil school spending of all but five other states and the District of Columbia.

In the category of “support services,” which measures the bureaucratic overhead of central district and school building administration, New York ranked sixth with spending of $8,762 per pupil, which was 54 percent above the national average.

However, if New York had only spent the national average in the support category, it still would have ranked first in overall per-pupil spending among the 50 states—undercutting any claims that New York’s high spending is due simply to the administrative costs of maintaining nearly 700 school districts.

Relative to personal income, New York’s elementary and secondary education spending of $56.49 per $1,000 ranked third, slightly behind Alaska and Vermont, 38 percent above the national average by this measure.

Excluding charter schools, New York’s public elementary and secondary schools had 2.37 million pupils and spent $76 billion on current operations in 2021-22—exceeded only by California, which spent about $93 billion on a public school system with 5.35 million pupils. Public schools spending in Texas, with 5 million pupils, was $16 billion lower than in New York. Florida schools had 2.8 million pupils but spent $32 billion, less than half the New York total.

New York City’s spending of $35,914 per pupil topped all of the nation’s 100 largest school systems. Los Angeles, second only to New York City when measured by enrollment, spent $21,940 per pupil, and Chicago spent $21,050.

As shown in the comparative table below, New York State also continues to spend considerably more than neighboring northeastern states with similarly powerful public education lobbies and high living costs. On a per-pupil basis, New York’s public school expenditures in 2020-21 were 22 percent higher than Connecticut’s, 19 percent higher than New Jersey’s, and 36 percent higher than Massachusetts’.

https://heartlanddailynews.com/2024/04/new-york-school-spending-led-all-us-record-margin-2021-22/

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Australia: Financial Help for Uni Students on Placement Floated

Financial help might be offered to university students completing unpaid placements as part of their degrees, as unions warn failure to provide support will result in greater workforce shortages.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the federal government was considering relief for people with university debts and students undergoing required practical placements in their courses.

“We are looking at both of those things for the budget,” Mr. Chalmers told reporters on April 22.

Students studying nursing and teaching are among those required to complete unpaid placements to finish their degrees, and can be left struggling to pay bills especially during the cost of living crisis.

Last week, the prime minister suggested Labor was looking to reduce the rate of student debt indexation to stop money owed growing by more than four per cent in 2024.

Higher Education Loan Program (Help) debts are indexed to inflation, which resulted in a 7.1 percent jump in people’s debts in 2023.

Mr. Chalmers said the government acknowledged that students were under pressure.

“If we can afford to do something to help on that front, that’s obviously something we'll consider as we finalise the budget,” he said.

The Universities Accord report, released earlier in 2024, recommended the Commonwealth ensure student loans did not outpace wage growth.

NSW Nurses and Midwives Association assistant general secretary Michael Whaites said he strongly recommended paid placements for nursing and midwifery students.

They must carry out up to six months or 800 hours of unpaid clinical work in NSW, which carried immense financial pressure and at times placed students in poverty, he said.

“Failure to address this will continue to contribute to the workforce shortages that currently exist in nursing and midwifery, and this is untenable if we are to continue to deliver high quality health care in our health systems,” Mr. Whaites said.

“We hear a lot of stories of people having to ultimately drop out because they’re just not able to maintain the full amount of unpaid work, which can be as much as six to eight weeks in their final year of study, which is devastating after already having undertaken more than two years of study.”

The budget will be handed down on May 14.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/financial-help-for-uni-students-on-placement-floated-5634435

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

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