Displaying the most recent of 90038 posts written by

Ruth King

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Augusto Zimmermann :‘Cultural Feminism’ Betrays Women

By on May 4th, 2017

British hospitals report an average of fifteen cases of female genital mutilation each day, yet despite the practice being illegal since 1984 there have been no successful prosecutions. Where are the feminists on this and other issues such as forced marriages and ‘honour’ killings? Nowhere, it seems.
“Islam is the world’s most feminist religion,” the Australian Muslim woman Yassmin Abdel-Magied claimed on the ABC’s Q&A on February 13. Her controversial thesis has been shot down as ridiculous by conservative writers and politicians across the nation. However, her claim that Islam is “the most feminist” of all religions is not entirely wrong, if one considers it through the lens of a particular variant of radical feminist ideology—cultural feminism.

Abdel-Magied’s observation about women under Islam is typical of cultural feminists who demand that individual members of “societal cultures” be endowed “with meaningful ways to live across the full range of human activities, including social, educational, religious, recreational, and economic life, encompassing both public and private spheres”. Since cultural identity is said to play a more pervasive role in the lives of certain minority groups, cultural feminists argue that the individual members of such groups should be accorded special rights (privileges) lest their minority status be endangered by the dominant culture. Any criticism of cultural or religious practices—including female genital mutilation and forced marriage—is summarily dismissed as a form of “colonialist imperialism”, one which is disrespectful of the more deep-seated traditions of non-majoritarian ethnic and religious groups.

Above all, cultural feminism advocates that special consideration must be given not just for the legal status of individual women in Western societies, but also for the position of individuals belonging to minority groups. Since the alleged deprivation experienced by certain minority groups is regarded primarily as a result of “white male oppression”, cultural feminists generally support state-imposed measures which attempt to correct “past injustices” in the workplace and other spheres of social activity.

From a human-rights perspective, however, there are serious problems with the ideology of cultural feminism. By prioritising collective rights at the expense of the basic rights of the individual, cultural feminists risk themselves justifying the ill-treatment of individual women, both within and outside Western societies.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

“Palestine” is Already a “Failed State” Shoshana Bryen

By on May 4th, 2017

The impending visit of Mahmoud Abbas to Washington on Wednesday coupled with moves on Capitol Hill to cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a result of Palestinian terrorism makes this a good time to focus on Palestinian governance.Once the Trump administration does, it will find Palestinian governance has not gone well — despite or perhaps even because of the billions in foreign aid, including American money, pumped into the PA. For example:

The authority’s 2016 budget shows estimated expenditures of $4.25 billion but revenues of only $2 billion. That includes more than $1 billion in contributions from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the European Union and the United States. In perspective, the gross domestic product (GDP) of the territory under supervision of Mr. Abbas‘ PA (the West Bank and Gaza Strip, population estimated at more than 4 million) is about $12.1 billion; Vermont’s GDP (population approximately 625,000) is $29 billion. The PA was established in 1994 as a result of the Oslo Accords. The international community — led by the United States — provided funds to the nascent administration to help it create self-government for the vast majority of the Palestinian Arabs.

The authority also was to conduct negotiations with Israel over “final status issues,” namely Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security and borders. The job was to be completed by 1999.

Oslo did not mandate an independent Palestinian state, but rather “recognize[s] [Israeli and Palestinian] mutual legitimate and political rights.” That could be independence or nonsovereign self-rule. It also stated that “negotiations on the permanent status will lead to the implementation of Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973)” under which Israel is entitled to “secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force,” among other things.

In 2000, 2001 and 2006-08, the United States and Israel offered Palestinian leadership statehood directly. The first two offers were made regardless of the so-called “second intifada” — the Palestinian terror war against Israel — that killed 1,137 Israelis and wounded 8,341 from 2000 to 2005. (The U.S. equivalent would be 45,480 dead, 333,640 injured — a factor of 40.)

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said of the negotiations that started just after relative calm was restored, “From the end of 2006 until the end of 2008, I think I met with [Mahmoud Abbas] more often than any Israeli leader has ever met any Arab leader. I met him more than 35 times. They were intense, serious negotiations.”

Mr. Olmert’s offer included 97 percent of the West Bank, resettlement of some — by no means all — Palestinian refugees, territorial exchanges, and rights in Jerusalem. Mr. Abbas verified as much in a 2009 interview and confirmed that he declined the offer.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Is Western Civilization a Racist Construct? Edward Cline

By on May 4th, 2017

New York Magazine says yes. In April, ran a long, long article on the “Alt-Right,” “Beyond Alt: The extremely reactionary, burn-it-down-radical, newfangled far right,” authored by seventeen contributors (!). The magazine, being one of the leftist persuasion, attempted to cover the whole gamut of what is called the “Alt-Right,” (or the Alternative Right), that is, what are considered by the Left to be “extreme” individuals, publications, and memes that oppose the welfare state and statism and the Progressive path to full-scale socialism. Racists and anti-Semites were stuffed into the same bag, which I think the writers would have been happy to tie and toss into the East River. The Alt-Right carries a lot of unasked-for baggage, to judge by Wikipedia’s discussion of the subject:

The alt-right, or alternative right, is a loose group of people with right to far-right ideologies who reject mainstream conservatism in the United States. White supremacist Richard Spencer appropriated the term in 2010 to define a movement centered on white nationalism, and has been accused by some media publications of doing so to whitewash overt racism, white supremacism, and neo-Nazism. Alt-right beliefs have been described as white supremacist, frequently overlapping with anti-Semitism and Neo-Nazism, nativism and Islamophobia, antifeminism and homophobia, white nationalism, right-wing populism, and the neoreactionary movement. The concept has further been associated with multiple groups from American nationalists, neo-monarchists, men’s rights advocates, and the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump.

Quite a grab-bag of groups in an artificial homogeny concocted by the leftwing political world view. The New York Magazine’s article and Wikipedia perform a scatter-shot drive-by shooting intended to discredit and smear legitimate, responsible spokesmen for reason and Western civilization together with the screaming meemies, such as Richard Spenser, Dilbert, and Jack Donovan.

NY Magazine also deigned to quote the National Review, which, as a conservative publication, somehow does not earn its enmity and sarcasm:

In National Review in April 2016, Ian Tuttle wrote,

The Alt-Right has evangelized over the last several months primarily via a racist and anti-Semitic online presence. But for Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos, the alt-right consists of fun-loving provocateurs, valiant defenders of Western civilization, daring intellectuals—and a handful of neo-Nazis keen on a Final Solution 2.0, but there are only a few of them, and nobody likes them anyways.

National Review does a more economical job of painting the Alt-Right in almost psychedelic colors than does New York Magazine.

Curiously, I have not received any solicitations or invitations via email from any of the groups mentioned in either the New York magazine article or in Wikipedia, even though in the ineffable ignorance of Left and Right, my blog columns could easily be labeled one or the other. I am certainly familiar with Milo Yiannopoulos and Paul Joseph Watson, but not at all with Allum Bokhari or many of the people mentioned, such as Rebekah Mercer or Peter Thiel. I have never heard of half the individuals, organizations, and blog sites mentioned by New York Magazine’s authors.

However, as Victor David Hanson points out in one NR column, “You Gotta Lie”:

Red/blue, conservative/liberal, and Republican/Democrat mark traditional American divides. But one fault line is not so 50/50 — that of the contemporary hard progressive movement versus traditional politics, values, and customs.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Israel’s economy surges against all odds Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

By on May 4th, 2017

Intel acquired Mobileye, Israel’s auto-tech giant, for $15.3BN (Globes, March 13, 2017). The British equity firm, APAX, acquired Israel’s medical equipment Syneron for $397MN (Globes, April 30). The New Jersey-based Becton-Dickinson, the medical equipment giant, acquired Israel’s CME for $250mn (Globes, April 5). Palo Alto acquired Israel’s LightCyber for $130mn. In 2014,, Palo Alto acquired Israel’s Cyvera for $112mn (Globes, March 1). The Washington, DC-based Danaher acquired Israel’s printing quality inspection AVT for $107mn (Globes, March 6). The New York-based event-ticketing giant, SeatGeek, acquired Israel’s TopTix for $56mn (Globes, April 20).

2. 155 Israeli hightech companies raised $1bn during the first quarter of 2017, compared to $1bn during the 4th quarter of 2016, $933mn – 3rd quarter, $1.7bn – 2nd quarter and $1.1bn – 1st quarter of 2016 (Globes, April 29). For example, China’s BOE invested $50mn in Israel’s medical equipment startup, CNoga (Globes, March 6); the Dallas-based LS Health Science Partners invested $30mn in Israel orthopedic equipment Active Implants, in addition to $10mn invested by the Dallas-based View Capital and the Memphis-based River Street Management (Globes March 14); The British auto parts giant, Delphi, led an investment round of $25mn in Israel’s Otonomo, joined by Menlo Park-based Bessemer, New Jersey-based Maniv and London-based LocalGlobe (Globes, April 9); etc.

3. Fitch credit rating reaffirmed Israel’s credit rating at A+, based on the stability of Israel’s economy, balance of payment surplus, expansion of foreign exchange reserves, decline of debt-GDP ratio from 95.2% in 2003 to 62.2% in 2016, decrease of budget deficit, natural gas potential, etc. (Globes, April 26, 2017).

4. The Economist Intelligence Unit (April 1): “Israel’s recent strong overall economic performance…. Real GDP grew by 4% in 2016, set to persist for most of the forecast period…. Export growth will pick up in 2017-18. Further increases in gas output and a modest recovery in exports, particularly in new and established markets in Asia…. The Israeli Shekel’s strength against the Dollar will continue to pose challenges for policymakers…. The Shekel remains strong against the Euro and the British Pound…. Trade deficit will narrow steadily…. The opening of new production facilities by Intel will further boost technology goods exports, and natural gas exports will begin by the end of the forecast period.”

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

MY SAY: THE APRIL OF MY DISCONTENT

By on May 3rd, 2017

The New York Times has a new op-ed contributor named Marwan Barghouti. His op-ed “Why We Are on Hunger Strike in Israel’s Prisons”– is a screed to make Thomas Friedman proud.
The Times described Barghouti as a “Palestinian leader and parliamentarian.”
Oops! The Times somehow forgot to mention that Marwan Barghouti is a terrorist serial killer whose savagery earned him five life sentences. It’s like describing Jeffrey Dahmer, the cannibal serial killer, as a “culinary innovator.”
The New York Times must like the name Barghouti. Omar Barghouti, one of the founders of the BDS movement and author of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights is also a favored contributor. In a January 2014 op-ed he explained “Why Israel Fears the Boycott” listing the usual litany of lies and accusations. In May 2015 he wrote an op-ed “Israeli Extremism Will Encourage Global Boycott” quoting a poll by J Street to bolster his bias. On March 16th, 2017 in a letter to the editor, he compares BDS to the civil rights movement, quotes a questionable Brookings Institute poll on American support for sanctions against Israel, and spells out the agenda of BDS:
“Since its inception in 2005 by the Palestinian grass-roots civil society coalition, B.D.S. has consistently called for ending Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; granting full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, who are discriminated against by dozens of laws; and recognizing the United Nations-stipulated right of Palestinian refugees to return to lands from which they were forcibly displaced during Israel’s establishment in 1948.” He could have said it in one sentence: BDS calls for the end of Israel….period! And has anyone told him that Gaza is not “occupied” since 2005?
Other mainstream papers contribute to anti-Israel bias by ignoring relevant stories.
To paraphrase George Berkeley about a tree falling in the woods, if the media doesn’t report it, did it happen?
In France, on April 3, an Orthodox Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, a doctor aged 66, was thrown out of a window to her death by an African neighbor who shouted “Allahu akbar!” The mainstream media ignored it.
On April 21 a speeding car driven by an Arab rammed into a bus stop at the Gush Etzion bus stop injuring an elderly man. The Gush Etzion spokesperson said the incident marks the second such attack in the last month. Earlier this month, Sgt. Elchai Teharlev was killed in a car ramming attack while guarding a bus stop just outside the West Bank settlement of Ofra.
The mainstream media ignored these events. Maybe they did not happen? CONTINUE AT SITE

Continue reading →
MEDIA Comments turned off

Celebrating Communism at the New York Times A century after the Bolshevik Revolution, Vivian Gornick is still a fan. by Bruce Bawer

By on May 3rd, 2017

On Sunday night I was up late writing, and so on Monday I slept right up until the moment I was awakened, sometime around midday, by the blaring sound of a marching band in the street. I didn’t need to look out the window to know what was going on. The music was The Internationale. The date was May 1. In the small Norwegian town where I live, the May Day parade was passing by.

The New York Times commemorated the Communist holiday in its own way – with an essay by Vivian Gornick, now eighty-one, a card-carrying member of the old New York intellectual crowd and author of a 2011 biography of anarchist heroine Emma Goldman. The piece – entitled “When Communism Inspired Americans” – is the latest example of what has long since become a genre all its own: the fond look back at American Stalinism.

The essay isn’t Gornick’s first contribution to the genre. Her 1977 book The Romance of American Communism, a collection of interviews with old Party members, was described by Commentary reviewer Marion Magid as an “adoring account” that depicts their perfidy “as a romantic episode in American history.” In the book, Gornick portrayed these old Communists as “the golden children called to Marxism” and claimed that they “feared, hungered, and cared more” than other people and possessed a “wisdom passion alone can purchase.” Noting that most of Gornick’s interviewees were Jews, Magid quite rightly challenged the idea that there was any “wisdom” in their “slavish support of the Soviet Union throughout the long period of Stalinist treachery and the calculated destruction of Soviet Jewish life.”

Nor was there anything “golden” about their ability to keep their Communism intact despite (this is Magid’s list) “The Moscow Trials, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the Doctors’ Plot, the takeover in Czechoslovakia, the Slansky Trial, the murdered writers, the labor camps, and all the rest.” Not only did American Communists accept all these abominations, noted Magid, “they justified it, those wonderful couples, ‘hungry for justice,’ rushing off to protest meetings and ‘peace’ rallies and picket lines while supper cooled on the stove at home and bullets met their mark in the cellars of the Lubianka. To read this book along with, say, the memoirs of Nadezhda Mandelstam is to become almost physically ill. The romance of Communism, indeed. It is an apology that is required—not an elegy.”

One can understand Magid’s disgust. Back when it was first published, The Romance of American Communism was part of a new wave of books, movies, articles, and other material that treated that subject with sympathy. In The Cause that Failed: Communism in American Public Life (1991), Guenter Lewy cited Gornick’s book, along with films like The Front and Lillian Hellman’s memoir Scoundrel Time (both 1976), as part of a “new attitude” and “revisionist history” that represented American Communists “as persecuted defenders of American democracy.” Lewy quoted historian William O’Neill: “One would not know from seeing such films as The Front or reading books like The Romance of American Communism…that the heroes in them were apologists for Stalin’s death machine.”

Continue reading →
MEDIA Comments turned off

Chelsea Handler, Muslim Beards And No Fun In Islam Has Handler considered that Muslim terrorists might be having fun? Jamie Glazov

By on May 3rd, 2017

Recently, Kumail Nanjiani, the star of HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” complained to Chelsea Handler on her Netflix talk show about the supposed negative image of Muslims in American popular culture. A Pakistani-American and Muslim, Nanjiani asked Handler what she sees in her head when she thinks of Muslims and Handler answered that she envisions “serious people” and “…not like …fun.” Nanjiani interjected “there’s a beard” as she was speaking and she agreed and repeated “beard”.

Handler’s answer, apparently, revealed the horrific bigotry of America and its culture — and Nanjiani explained what a big scandal it all represents. This is why, he told Handler, his wife wants to start a Tumblr called, ‘Muslims Having Fun.’ Because, you see, as Nanjiani whined, one never sees Muslims having fun in American popular culture.

Handler got very excited about all of this and subsequently tweeted out in moral indignation: “Why don’t we get to see any fun Muslims?”

Oh, the injustice of it all.

What Nanjiani won’t tell us, of course, and what Handler would never dare say, let alone fathom, is that maybe we see “serious-minded” Muslim men with beards, and we don’t regularly see any Muslims having fun, is because . . . well . . . it may all have something to do with Islam. There is a great value, you see, placed on the wearing of beards in Islamic texts (i.e. Sahih al-Bukhari 7:72:780) and Muslims are required to emulate the example of the Prophet, who is believed to have sported a beard.

In terms of having fun, if Nanjiani and Handler were even remotely interested in, or honest about, Islam, they would know that Islam mandates the polar opposite of the Declaration of Independence’s emphasis on the right of humans to pursue happiness. It is a fundamental difference between Islam and the Judeo-Christian tradition, which my book, United in Hate, argues is at the heart of Jihad’s war on the West.

Nanjiani and Handler might do well to focus on why Ayatollah Khomeini stated:

Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious.

In my interview on the Nanjiani-Handler comedy fest with Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch and author of the New York Times bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), he had this to say:

This episode reflects the general tendency of the Leftist intelligentsia to claim that people are suspicious of Islam or Muslims in the U.S. today because of the ‘media,’ which is supposedly ‘Islamophobic.’ The idea that the establishment media, which so assiduously covers for Islam by obscuring in any possible way the Islamic identity and motives of jihad murderers, is ‘Islamophobic’ is laughable, but it nonetheless prevails.

We don’t see Muslims having fun because, you see, ‘Islamophobes’ control the entertainment industry (which gave us, a few years back, the Canadian sitcom ‘Little Mosque on the Prairie,’ a forced exercise in Muslims Having Fun.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Do Palestinian Arabs Want a Peaceful State Alongside Israel? What consistent polling of Palestinians tells us. Morton A. Klein and Daniel Mandel

By on May 3rd, 2017

Discussion of the Arab/Israeli situation is often unilluminating because so much of it is based on groundless assumptions and stubborn fictions. Perhaps the most pervasive one today afflicting the international political class is the notion that Palestinian Arabs primarily desire a state of their own, living peacefully alongside Israel.

Some recent examples:

December 2016, then-Secretary of State John Kerry: “polls of Israelis and Palestinians show there is still strong support for the two-state solution.”
July 2016, the Middle East Quartet (US, EU, UN and Russia): “the majority of people on both sides . . . express their support for the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security.”
December 2014, then-Vice-President Joe Biden: “a two-state solution … the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians, they think that it is the right way to go.”
May 2014, then-envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Martin Indyk: “Consistently over the last decade, polling on both sides reveals majority support for the two-state solution.”

Go back a decade, and one can easily produce essentially identical quotations from President George W. Bush, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, and so on.

However, the idea that Palestinians prioritize peace, statehood and prosperity flies in the face of reality. Consistent polling of Palestinians tells a diametrically opposite story.

For example, a June 2016 joint poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) found that 58% of West Bank Palestinians oppose a Palestinian state involving mutual recognition between Israel and the envisaged Palestinian state and an end of claims.

For another, the June 2015 Palestine Center for Public Opinion poll found that, for the near term (the next five years), 49% of Palestinians support “reclaiming all of historic Palestine from the river to the sea,” while only 22% favored “a two-state solution” as the “main Palestinian national goal.”

Indeed, Daniel Polisar of Jerusalem’s Shalem College, in a recent examination of literally hundreds of Palestinian surveys, established that majorities of Palestinians reject Palestinian statehood alongside Israel by an average of more than 3 to 1.

It takes only a moment’s checking of the Palestinian scene to see that the idea of peaceful statehood and acceptance of Israel that would be its prerequisite has yet to emerge.

In the past month, official Palestinian Authority (PA) TV joined the family of a jailed Palestinian terrorist, As’ad Zo’rob, who murdered an Israeli who had given him a ride, lauding him as a “heroic prisoner” and a source of “pride for …. all of Palestine.”

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

UC-Berkeley: Promoting Jew-hatred and Terrorism “Let it be known that we here at Berkeley support the Intifada.” Sara Dogan

By on May 3rd, 2017

Editor’s note: The University of California-Berkeley is the latest school to be named to the Freedom Center’s report on the “Top Ten College Administrations Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment.” It joins the campuses of Brooklyn College (CUNY), Tufts University, Brandeis University, UCLA, and Vassar College on the list. These campuses provide financial and institutional support to terrorist-linked campus organizations such as the Hamas-funded hate-group Students for Justice in Palestine while actively suppressing speech exposing the truth about Israel’s terrorist adversaries and their allies in the United States.

The Berkeley administration has shown great hostility to speech critical of Hamas and SJP. When the Freedom Center previously placed posters on the Berkeley campus exposing the links between Hamas and SJP, Berkeley Associate Chancellor Nils Gilman labeled them “a tactic of harassment and intimidation.” Last night, the Freedom Center again placed posters critical of Hamas and SJP on the Berkeley campus. These posters disrupt the anti-Israel narrative that dominates on campus and serve as a challenge to the Berkeley administration to uphold its constitutional obligation to honor the First Amendment on campus.

University of California-Berkeley: Nils Gilman, Associate Chancellor

The University of California-Berkeley has a well-deserved reputation for stigmatizing ideas which don’t fit the extreme left-wing, anti-Israel campus culture. Berkeley Associate Chancellor Nils Gilman has epitomized this double-standard by failing to condemn outright calls for terrorism and genocide against the Jews from campus anti-Israel groups while denouncing posters putting forth factual information about Students for Justice in Palestine and its links to Hamas.

In a letter sent to the entire campus community in April 2016, Gilman denounced anti-SJP posters hung on campus by the David Horowitz Freedom Center as “a tactic of harassment and intimidation.” He claimed that UC Berkeley “remains committed to combating all forms of bias and discrimination” and asked the campus community to “use this opportunity to reinforce our values as a campus, and to report any further incidents”—in other words, urging Berkeley’s students and faculty to report any speech that challenges the leftist thought control enforced at Berkeley.

When the Freedom Center again hung posters exposing the truth about SJP at Berkeley in October of 2016, Gilman issued another letter stating that the language in the posters “violates our Principles of Community” and ordered them to be taken down.

The UC-Berkeley Principles of Community which he references state, in part, “We affirm the dignity of all individuals and strive to uphold a just community in which discrimination and hate are not tolerated” and “We are committed to ensuring freedom of expression and dialogue that elicits the full spectrum of views held by our varied communities.”

But by failing to uphold free speech and intellectual diversity, Gilman’s comments in his letters to the Berkeley community violate these Principles. They also degrade the spirit of open discourse and the exploration of all sides of crucial issues which lie at the heart of the mission of the modern liberal arts university.

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

Yale’s ‘Starving’ Grad Students, Stuffed with Nonsense But don’t blame snowflakes; blame bureaucrats. By Aaron Sibarium

By on May 3rd, 2017

Last Tuesday, eight Yale graduate students began an indefinite hunger strike on Beinecke Plaza, just a stone’s throw away from the university’s administrative offices. The graduate students’ union, Local 33, which organized this “protest fast,” said in a statement that they would not leave until Yale initiates contract negotiations with the union.

Or until they start to feel light-headed.

According to the New Haven Independent, “if not eating endangers a student’s health, that individual will sub out and another union member will assume their place in renouncing meals.” And should low blood sugar cloud the strikers’ judgment, a team of medical professionals is standing by to monitor the fast’s progress. Such safeguards were of little comfort to Robin Canavan, who compared the physical toll of the strike to that ghastly feeling of “exhaustion after pulling an all-nighter.” An all-nighter without any coffee.

But even this crippling fatigue won’t deter Local 33 chairman Aaron Greenberg, a Ph.D. candidate in Yale’s political-science department and a self-styled civil-rights activist. In his recent op-ed in the New Haven Independent, Greenberg invoked the words of Martin Luther King to condemn Yale’s abhorrent treatment of its graduate students:

King explained that his campaign sought “to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.” This is what we did yesterday in Local 33 when we began our fast.

He goes on:

So let’s not have any mistakes about what Yale means when they say they “respect the process” of the law. . . . It’s the dynamic Dr. King described when he wrote, “‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’”

Yale should up its admissions standards. Greenberg’s civil-rights analogy displays an astonishing level of historical amnesia, which trivializes the struggles of King and other black leaders. But more than that, it reflects a new and worrying trend: the corporatization of higher education.

To characterize Yale’s unwillingness to begin contract negotiations as an assault on human dignity is to reduce the relationship of students and administrators to that of employers and employees. On this view, Yale’s obligations to its graduate students are just like a company’s obligations to its workers. In forestalling collective bargaining and, by extension, in opposing Local 33, the administration functions as an oppressive corporate entity, more than willing to sacrifice the welfare of its employees to maximize profit. Indeed, the concept of graduate unionization makes sense only when it is presented as a response to precisely this sort of dynamic — the proletariat against the plutocrat.

Greenberg’s views thus rest on a grave category error, in that they apply the framework of labor relations to what is fundamentally not a labor-relations issue. When Bernie Sanders said that American workers were burnt out, I somehow doubt that Yale graduate students were the people he had in mind.

When Bernie Sanders said that American workers were burnt out, I somehow doubt that Yale graduate students were the people he had in mind.

Continue reading →