Displaying posts published in

October 2019

EDUCATION Comments turned off

2019 Survey of Campus Speech Experts By Nathan Harden

By on October 26th, 2019

The Best and Worst Schools for Free Speech and Viewpoint Diversity

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2019/10/24/2019_survey_of_campus_speech_experts.html

Controversies over free speech on college campuses are in the news seemingly every week, whether it’s an unpopular guest speaker being shouted down, a voluntary student group being banned from campus, or a professor losing his job over something he said in the classroom. While most Americans consider open inquiry and academic freedom essential to the mission of a university, the debate over what can or cannot be said on campus is far from settled at most schools today.

How serious is the speech problem in higher education? Is the problem widespread or just relegated to a small group of campuses? Which colleges and universities are doing a good job of protecting speech? RealClearEducation conducted a survey of experts on the campus speech climate in order to explore these questions.

About This Survey

This survey is designed to show how schools stack up in the opinions of experts who are concerned about free speech on campus. It’s a small sample of opinions and is not, to be clear, a scientific poll. If you look closely at our survey respondents, it’s evident that conservatives outnumber liberals. We originally invited 70 academics, pundits, and policy experts to participate. About half were recognizably on the left end of the political spectrum. Some of them accepted. Panelists such as Jonathan Haidt, Gregory Lukianoff, and Jeffrey A. Sachs, for instance, are certainly not political conservatives.

Nevertheless, a majority of the 22 invitees who ultimately completed our survey are recognizably on the right side of the political spectrum. This imbalance is itself instructive. A recent Pew Research Center study showed that Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to be worried about professors bringing their political and social views into the classroom (79% to 17%). Republicans are also far more likely than Democrats to believe that colleges are too concerned with protecting students from views they might find offensive (75% to 31%). The greater number of conservatives who agreed to participate in our panel reflects the greater concern conservatives have about campus speech. There are several identifiable libertarians on our panel as well.

There is an obvious reason for the special concern about the campus speech climate among conservatives. They are often outnumbered and underrepresented among the faculty and administration, particularly at elite schools. However, political liberals are increasingly raising concerns about censure on campus as well. On the other hand, there are those who say the entire notion of a campus speech crisis is overblown.

To gain more insight into this issue, we asked our panelists for their opinions on which U.S. colleges and universities have the best climate for free speech, viewpoint diversity, and open inquiry. We also asked them to tell us which schools they think have the most room for improvement in these areas. Finally, we asked panelists to share their thoughts on how free speech, viewpoint diversity, and open inquiry relate to the proper mission of a university. (Click here to download a full report on the survey in PDF format.)

Best Schools for Campus Speech

We conducted the survey in September 2019. Panelists were asked to name up to five schools that serve as positive role models in the areas of free speech, viewpoint diversity, and open inquiry.

University of Chicago – Best school with respect to campus speech climate according to RealClear’s 2019 survey of campus speech experts. (RealClearEducation)

• The University of Chicago was the clear winner for best speech climate, according to our survey. With its famous “Chicago Statement” guaranteeing students and faculty broad latitude for speech and strong protection of academic freedom, the vast majority of our panelists chose the University of Chicago as one of their top five picks.

• Next were Purdue University, Princeton University, the University of Virginia, Arizona State University, and Claremont McKenna College. These schools stood out to our panelists as positive role models with respect to campus speech climate.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe’s Populist Wave Reaches Portugal by Soeren Kern

By on October 26th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15053/portugal-populists-chega

André Ventura, leader of Portugal’s new populist party Chega! (Enough!), has said that the traditional parties “no longer respond to the people’s problems” and that he represents “disillusioned Portuguese.” He has called for lowering taxes, strengthening borders and increasing penalties for serious crimes.

Ventura has also called for a public referendum on reforming the Constitution in order to replace the existing parliamentary system with a presidential system that better guarantees the separation of powers. The existing political system, he said, was created by Marxists and fascists after the 1974 revolution in order to share the spoils after four decades of dictatorship. Indeed, the Portuguese Constitution calls for opening up “a path towards a socialist society.”

In the area of ​​foreign policy, Ventura has called for opposing European federalism, safeguarding national sovereignty from encroaching globalism and taking Portugal out of the UN’s Global Compact for Migration. He has called for reinforcing Portugal’s role in NATO, and for fighting against the “hegemonic temptations” of China, Iran and the European Union. He has also called for an “unequivocal commitment” to support the State of Israel and for transferring the Portuguese embassy to Jerusalem.

“If there is a problem with the community, we need to know where they are, who they are, what problems they have. And in Portugal you cannot even talk about it.” — André Ventura.

A Portuguese populist party called Chega! — Enough! — has secured a seat in Parliament, after winning more than 65,000 votes in legislative elections held on October 6. It is the first time that an anti-establishment party has entered Parliament since Portugal became a democracy in 1974.

Chega leader André Ventura, a 36-year-old law professor and television sports personality, campaigned on a theme of law and order and opposition to both political correctness and the imposition of cultural Marxism. He rode a wave of discontent with traditional center-right parties, which in recent years have drifted to the left on domestic and foreign policy issues.

The Socialist Party won the election with 36.3% of the vote, far short of an outright majority. The center-right Social Democrats won 27.8%, the party’s worst result since 1983. Chega, which was founded in March 2019, won 2% of the vote in Lisbon and 1.3% of the vote nationwide.

Political observers agreed that Chega’s result was impressive for a party that is only seven months old, and that Ventura’s entry into Parliament would give Chega greater prominence and media visibility, in addition to financial support.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Empty Absurdity Of The Democrats’ Dangerous Foreign Policy part 2 Thomas McArdle

By on October 26th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/26/the-empty-absurdity-of-the-democrats-dangerous-foreign-policy-2/

Part 2 of 2

The next Democratic president is likely not only to neglect or ignore national security threats requiring military assertiveness; he or she will subordinate U.S. interests to the will of foreign political elites and use American military might to promote socialism abroad.

Foreign policy has not been a great focus of the Democrats running for president, but that doesn’t negate the party’s increasing radicalism on defense.

Despite continuing to post strong polling numbers, even as his edge begins to weaken, Joe Biden, as he shows his age and continues his gaffes, cannot be expected to take the nomination. But if he were to be elected, expectations that he would conduct foreign policy like Presidents Bill Clinton or Barack Obama are misguided.

While boasting in the CNN debate this month that he’s “spent thousands of hours in the Situation Room” in the White House, Biden as he pushes 80 would be dominated by a young crop of advisers, and considering the state of the Democratic Party’s base it would be a bad bet to imagine that the likes of relative moderates such as current Biden advisers Nicholas Burns and Tony Blinken would be able to hold sway.

But what does the most likely nominee right now, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have in mind? During July’s CNN debate, she sent the unsettling signal that the U.S. “is not going to use nuclear weapons preemptively, and we need to say so to the entire world.” According to Warren, uncertainty about U.S. first use of a nuke “puts the entire world at risk and puts us at risk.”

Quite the contrary.

Warren Collapsing Our Nuclear Umbrella

It may shock many Americans to hear it, but, as Fred Kaplan, author of the forthcoming “The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War,” writer for Slate, and no conservative, recently pointed out, “from the dawn of the atomic age until now, U.S. policy has explicitly stated that we would use nuclear weapons first, if some crisis called for it … The threat of nuclear first-use — the assurance that we would risk New York for Paris, or Washington for London — lay at the heart of the U.S. security guarantee for the NATO alliance. It was — and still is — called ‘extended deterrence’ and the ‘nuclear umbrella.’”

This U.S. policy prevented nuclear war over the course of decades and restrained the expansionist Soviet Union until its collapse. As Kaplan put it with the plainest clarity, “you have to make adversaries believe you’d actually push the button, in order to keep them from getting too aggressive.” And as Kaplan further noted, “the Russian military now has a doctrine of using nuclear weapons first if NATO troops make incursions on Russian territory — mainly as a way of countering America’s supremacy in conventional arms.”

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Cowardly Republicans Showcase Disloyalty to Voters Keep in mind, Congress never authorized the U.S. military to be present in Syria in the first place. Adam Mill

By on October 26th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/25/cowardly-republicans-showcase-disloyalty-to-voters/

Forget Ukraine. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) jetted off this week to the Middle East to address yet another new theory she says justifies President Trump’s ouster: he dared to withdraw American forces from our undeclared war in Syria. Clearly, this is an impeachable offense! Cowardly Republicans and NeverTrumpers cautiously stuck their wet fingers into the political winds to determine whether it’s time, yet again, to swell up like windsocks full of righteous hot air.

The anti-withdrawal winds blow fiercely within the putrid D.C. swamp. But in the rest of the country that pays for our foreign wars in blood and treasure, Americans want fewer (not more) of these Middle East crusades. “Even Republicans have joined the bipartisan condemnation,” MSNBC, CNN, and now even Fox News hosts cluck as turncoats showcase their disloyalty to the American voter.

House Republicans joined their Democratic counterparts to vote 354-60 to condemn the president. The only surprise is that there are still 60 members of the House willing to represent voters’ skepticism of endless wars. One of those exceptions in the Senate, Rand Paul (R-Ky.), prevented the upper chamber of Congress from adopting the House’s illogical resolution.

The concern isn’t simply the Kurds, who aided the U.S. effort to crush ISIS in Syria. Turkey, which is a NATO ally, currently hosts around 3.6 million Syrian refugees who fled their country’s civil war. “President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,” the New York Times reports, “is pushing a radical solution—resettling refugees in a swath of Syrian territory controlled by the United States and its Kurdish allies. If that does not happen, he is threatening to send a flood of Syrian migrants to Europe.” Stabilizing the home country of refugees to allow for their safe return? What a diabolical plan! Thank heavens our brave political class put a stop to it. 

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Mathematics a tool of racial oppression, Seattle public schools committee says By Eric Utter

By on October 26th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/mathematics_a_tool_of_racial_oppression_seattle_public_schools_committee_says.html

Something called the “K–12 Math Ethnic Studies Framework,” created by a Seattle Public Schools “Ethnic Studies Advisory Committee,” is intended to instruct students that math is intimately connected to racial oppression.  Students will be taught “how technology and/or science have been and continues [sic] to be used to oppress and marginalize people and communities of color.”  The framework, the final draft of which is scheduled to be completed by September 2020, will also attempt to “explain how math dictates economic oppression.”  That’s correct: math.

Tracy Castro-Gill, the ethnic studies program manager at Seattle Public Schools, noted that the framework is intended to redress the fact that the district has not been properly serving minority students.  Castro-Gill said, “The goal is to disrupt the status quo and do something different.”  Disrupting the status quo is the goal — and sacred quest — of all progressives.  She added, “It’s important to break down barriers while valuing our differences.”  Those of her ilk love breaking down barriers.  And fences.  And standards.

The framework curriculum will consist of four themes: Origins, Identity, and Agency; Power and Oppression; History of Resistance and Liberation; and Reflection and Action.  Riddle me this: how is telling minorities that mathematical concepts have historically enslaved them providing them with a great service?  Resist those integers!  Free yourselves from the bonds of multiplication!

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BOOKS, ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The polar bear catastrophe that wasn’t

By on October 26th, 2019

Polar bears are the poster critters of the global warming movement. 

Their striking white coats are absolutely adorable — when they’re not trying to eat you alive.

School kids are taught every day to agonize over the fate of cute white bears starving, drowning and dying out. 

None of it is true.

Canadian Zoologist Susan Crockford has written an important new book.   explains why the catastrophic decline in polar bear numbers we were promised in 2007 failed to materialize.  Dr. Crockford sent us a limited supply of her fascinating book. 

Susan Crockford is the zoologist we wrote to you about last week who was purged from the University of Victoria for having the temerity to tell people the true facts about polar bears.

The warming-left considers their suffering cute polar bear narrative to be too valuable to allow hard data to interfere.  They are prepared to destroy the reputation of anyone who dares speak the truth.

The fact is that polar bears are a conservation success story.  Their numbers exploded from around 5,000 in the sixties to as many as 30,000 plus today thanks to a hunting ban.

Polar bears are thriving. 

The polar bear as global warming icon is anthropomorphism fused with alarmism run amok. 

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

This Impeachment Subverts the Constitution It’s nakedly political and procedurally defective, and so far there’s no public evidence of high crimes. By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley

By on October 26th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-impeachment-subverts-the-constitution-11572040762

Mr. Rivkin and Ms. Foley practice appellate and constitutional law in Washington. He served at the Justice Department and the White House Counsel’s Office during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations. She is a professor of constitutional law at Florida International University College of Law.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has directed committees investigating President Trump to “proceed under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry,” but the House has never authorized such an inquiry. Democrats have been seeking to impeach Mr. Trump since the party took control of the House, though it isn’t clear for what offense. Lawmakers and commentators have suggested various possibilities, but none amount to an impeachable offense. The effort is akin to a constitutionally proscribed bill of attainder—a legislative effort to punish a disfavored person. The Senate should treat it accordingly.

The impeachment power is quasi-judicial and differs fundamentally from Congress’s legislative authority. The Constitution assigns “the sole power of impeachment” to the House—the full chamber, which acts by majority vote, not by a press conference called by the Speaker. Once the House begins an impeachment inquiry, it may refer the matter to a committee to gather evidence with the aid of subpoenas. Such a process ensures the House’s political accountability, which is the key check on the use of impeachment power.

The House has followed this process every time it has tried to impeach a president. Andrew Johnson’s 1868 impeachment was predicated on formal House authorization, which passed 126-47. In 1974 the Judiciary Committee determined it needed authorization from the full House to begin an inquiry into Richard Nixon’s impeachment, which came by a 410-4 vote. The House followed the same procedure with Bill Clinton in 1998, approving a resolution 258-176, after receiving independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s report.

Mrs. Pelosi discarded this process in favor of a Trump-specific procedure without precedent in Anglo-American law. Rep. Adam Schiff’s Intelligence Committee and several other panels are questioning witnesses in secret. Mr. Schiff has defended this process by likening it to a grand jury considering whether to hand up an indictment. But while grand-jury secrecy is mandatory, House Democrats are selectively leaking information to the media, and House Republicans, who are part of the jury, are being denied subpoena authority and full access to transcripts of testimony and even impeachment-related committee documents. No grand jury has a second class of jurors excluded from full participation. CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Foreign Influence and Double Standards Democrats deplore Trump on Ukraine but not Clinton in 2016.

By on October 26th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign-influence-and-double-standards-11572044626

Democrats want to impeach Donald Trump for inviting Ukraine to investigate 2020 election rival Joe Biden. But then why are they opposed to investigating whether Democrats used Russian disinformation to get the FBI to investigate Donald Trump in 2016?

That’s the double standard now on gaudy public display over multiple news reports that U.S. Attorney John Durham’s review of the origins of the Russian fiasco of 2016 has become a criminal probe. Attorney General William Barr this year appointed Mr. Durham, a highly regarded and veteran prosecutor, to examine this part of the Russia tale that special counsel Robert Mueller chose to ignore.

Yet you’d now think, judging from the political reaction, that Mr. Durham was Rudy Giuliani. “These reports, if true, raise profound new concerns that the Department of Justice under AG Barr has lost its independence and become a vehicle for President Trump’s political revenge,” said a joint statement from Democratic impeachment investigators Jerrold Nadler and Adam Schiff.

“If the Department of Justice may be used as a tool of political retribution, or to help the President with a political narrative for the next election,” the statement added, “the rule of law will suffer new and irreparable damage.”

This is called pre-emptive political damage control. Democrats know that the Hillary Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Mr. Trump, and Fusion hired former British spook Christopher Steele, who compiled a dossier of allegations about Mr. Trump from Russian sources that turned out to be false.

Worse, Fusion funneled the dossier to the FBI, which used it to persuade the secret FISA court to issue a warrant to eavesdrop on Trump official Carter Page. Democrats now want to discredit any attempt to hold people accountable if crimes were committed as part of this extraordinary dirty trick.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Senate Democrats Warn Hillary Not to Jump Into 2020 Race By Mairead McArdle

By on October 26th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/senate-democrats-warn-hillary-not-to-jump-into-2020-race/

In the wake of reports that Hillary Clinton is considering making a late entry into the 2020 presidential race, Senate Democrats are warning her against it, saying the party has moved on.

“She’s done a great service to our country and public service, and I supported her wholeheartedly, but I believe it’s time for another nominee,” Senate minority whip Dick Durbin said, according to a Politico report.

Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico called the move a “mistake.”

Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, generally the most conservative Senate Democrat, said, “Absolutely not,” when asked about a possible Clinton 2020 run.

The senators’ expressions of doubt come after longtime Clinton adviser Philippe Reines said earlier this week that the former secretary of state has not ruled out running in 2020 and would consider doing so if she thought she had the best odds of beating President Trump.

“There might be a reason that she’d be the best person, not only to beat Donald Trump, but to govern after Donald Trump, which is a part we don’t talk about much,” Reines said. “You can make fun of her all you want, but 65 million people voted for her and that’s second more to anyone except Barack Obama.”

Establishment Democratic donors have also reportedly been musing about what the 2020 race would look like if Clinton jumped in at the eleventh hour.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

No Canada Redux: An Election Autopsy By David Solway

By on October 26th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/no-canada-redux-an-election-autopsy/

The results of the October 21, 2019 election have served to confirm that Canada is a lost cause. Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau, a very silly person who likes bobbing around in Indian costumes, praying in mosques robed in a white thawb, and uttering idiocies like “We don’t say mankind, we say peoplekind,” who pranced about in blackface and flaunting a genital banana, and who is guilty of two ethics violations which he wears like a badge of honor, has been re-elected, albeit with a minority government. With 157 seats the Liberals fell 13 short of majority status.

The New Democratic Party continues its course as a socialist aberration that will never die, even if it remains on mental life support; the press tells us it has surged in the polls though, in reality, it lost 15 seats from its previous total of 39. But it remains a player.

The Conservatives topped the Liberals in the popular vote, 34.4 to 33.06, but its 121 seats is testimony to a party that has run out of feet to shoot, owing to a lackluster campaign, a war room with the collective intelligence of a zucchini and a gelatinous leader who should be immediately cashiered, surely a plus for the party, though he has vowed to stay on. Who would replace him is another question entirely.

A major surprise was the performance of the Bloc Québécois, the formerly separatist party that was effectively wiped out in the previous two elections, which crossed the finish line with 32 seats. What its role will be in the new parliament is unclear. The Green Party, a mosh pit of vocal nonentities, managed 3 seats, a historic high, but the environment is still safe from its frenetic meddling. Judy Wilson-Raybould, former Liberal Justice Minister and pro-aboriginal advocate, won re-election as an Independent.

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