The Chronicle of Higher Education has reported on the complaint against UC Santa Cruz (America's Wackiest Universioty). In the below link, you can also access the original complaint letter filed by UCSC Professor Tammi Rossman-Benjamin. The complaint alleges that the academic climate is so overbearing and one-sided against Israel that it has led to a hostile climate on campus for many Jewish students.
http://chronicle.com/article/Education-Dept-Investigates/126742/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
As you read the complaint, you will note the same familiar pattern as in universities all over the country; teachers getting on their soap boxes about issues that have nothing to do with the subject matter that is supposed to be taught in class, students with a different view being scorned in class, university departments sponsoring one-sided events in which they present their opinions as facts, and feckless adminisitrators afraid to take action against their rogue faculty.
That is NOT education. It is..........(chorus)
INDOCTRINATION!
The University of California at Santa Cruz, Ladies and Gentlemen, America's Wackiest University
(Home of the Banana Slugs).
After reading Rossman-Benjamin's letter, it is difficult to find much merit in her complaint. She's a comfortably positioned cry-baby, who wants her turn to "feel oppressed."
ReplyDeleteMost of the content of her letter is devoted to complaining that a great deal of material is being presented as "The Truth" which she believes to be false. She may be right about that. But putting Israel in a false light is not, per se, anti-Semitism.
There is a great deal of falsehood presented publicly as "The Truth" or "the real story" in the United States, and in many parts of the world. Either we have a state agency entrusted to sort out truth from error, allowing only truth to be presented in public, or we have freedom of speech.
To the extent that students attempting to exercise their own freedom of speech are being shouted down, or their microphone turned off, or threatened with assault or other retaliation, there is a legitimate civil rights complaint. Most of the complaint is not devoted to such allegations.
To the extent that identifiably Jewish students are being retaliated against physically or administratively, because they are Jewish, there is also a legitimate civil rights complaint. Again, the complaint alludes to such events only in passing, and only by implication.
Otherwise, as Justice Antonin Scalia has pointed out many times, it takes a minimum of courage to exercise your freedom to deliver unpopular speech. Fellow students called a student a Nazi? "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." Better "Define Nazi." Most of those cretins don't even know enough about the word to offer a definition. On a good day they could toss off a tautology like "A Nazi is anyone who supports Israel." Well if that's the definition, then I'm a Nazi, what's wrong with that? Oh, there is MORE to the definition? Well, try again.
I cheerfully refuted presentations by rabidly anti-Israel Maoists forty years ago, and enjoyed every minute of it. It did throw them for a loop that Lenin endorsed the Balfour Declaration. The intellectually challenged misfits who pass themselves off a "leftists" these days wouldn't have the sense to be befuddled. They don't know who Lenin was anyway. They just have an emotional sense of righteousness over some thought that strayed into their little minds yesterday afternoon. No CLASS, if you know what I mean.
It doesn't take the U.S. Office of Civil Rights to refute them, just some stamina and courage. But, a complaint having been filed, of course it should be investigated.
Wha...???
ReplyDeleteWhy do I even read such gibberish???
.
Siarlys,
ReplyDelete"Good news, mein Fuehrer. Siarlys says there is no problem."
Miggie, you read this because it is way over your little pointed head, and you hope perhaps someday you will learn a bit of critical thinking. One thing you have in common with what passes for a "left" on our campuses these days is that none of you know what that is.
ReplyDeleteAll you know is "Darn, this doesn't conform to my personal judgement, so I don't like it."
Gary, similarly befuddled, resorts to his usual last resort, a bit of name calling, faint sounds and a weak attempt at fury, signifying nothing.