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Excuses - and silence - in the face of evil.. Slaughter in cold blood. Beheadings of babies. Torture. Rape as a weapon of war. All were part of Hamas’s genocidal attacks against Israeli Jews on October 7, 2023. This rampage, which took more Jewish lives in one day than on any other day since the Holocaust, should shock the conscience of any person who has a conscience. But what we see too often instead is a disgusting display of excuses, moral equivalence, and indifference in response to the gruesome violence that Jews, including so many defenseless women and girls, suffered...

https://twitter.com/DanielAlmanPGH/status/1733680074224746942Daniel Alman from Squirrel Hill@DanielAlmanPGH My question for #ClaudineGay, #LizMagill, and #SallyKornbluth: Under what "context" would it be OK for someone to call for the genocide of my Jewish relatives, friends, and neighbors? #SquirrelHill #Antisemitism #Jews #Genocide #Harvard #UPenn #MIT #Nazis #Hitler #Holocaust 9:48 PM · Dec 9, 2023

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Universities of Wisconsin regents narrowly rejected a deal Saturday reached with Republicans that would have given employees a pay raise and paid for construction of a new engineering building in exchange for reductions in staff positions focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. The deal would have frozen hiring for diversity positions, dropped an affirmative action faculty hiring program at UW-Madison and created a position at the flagship campus focused on conservative thought. The engineering building would have been built at UW-Madison. Conservatives have long criticized the UW system as a bastion of liberalism. Democrats have accused...

University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill – under increasing pressure from both donors and the White House after her disastrous testimony before Congress this week on the school’s failure to protect Jewish students – “voluntarily” resigned her post Saturday, the school announced. “I write to share that President Liz Magill has voluntarily tendered her resignation as President of the University of Pennsylvania. She will remain a tenured faculty member at Penn Carey Law. “On behalf of the entire Penn community, I want to thank President Magill for her service to the University as President and wish her well. “We will...

Foxx warned that other universities should expect to be faced with similar investigations... Rep. Dr. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Chairwoman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, has announced a formal investigation into Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT. This comes after the presidents of all three universities refused to affirm that “calling for the genocide of Jews” is necessarily against the rules at their respective universities. Each of the three university presidents refused to answer “yes,” after being asked multiple times whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” violates their own university policies. All three presidents repeatedly...

II. Definitions A. Definition of Bullying Bullying, used as a shorthand for hostile and abusive behavior or power-based harassment, is defined here as harmful interpersonal aggression by words or actions that humiliate, degrade, demean, intimidate, or threaten2 an individual or individuals. For a violation of the Policy to occur, such aggression must be sufficiently severe or pervasive, and objectively offensive, that it creates a work, educational, or living environment that a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or abusive and denies the individual an equal opportunity to participate in the benefits of the workplace or the institution’s programs and activities....

Harvard President Claudine Gay has apologized over her controversial remarks during a House Education committee hearing this week. Gay testified alongside Elizabeth Magill, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, and Sally Kornbluth, head of MIT, during a hearing about the rise of antisemitism on college campuses. All three women have faced intense criticism for failing to definitively state that calling for genocide against Jews would be considered a violation of harassment and bullying policies. When Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) posed the question to Gay, she said it depended on the context. “It does not depend on the context,” Stefanik,...

The University of Pennsylvania is expected to ask its president, Liz Magill, to resign Friday over growing outrage at her failure to condemn calls for the genocide of the Jewish people — a move celebrated by billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who said she would be “one down.” The Ivy League school’s board of trustees held an emergency meeting Thursday to deal with the fallout from Magill’s disastrous congressional testimony Tuesday, which has already driven a Wall Street titan to try to claw back a $100 million donation and led to calls for her ouster. Board chairman Scott Bok...

Columbia University’s School of Social Work proceeded with its “teach in” on the so-called “significance” of the October 7 terror attacks against Israel by Hamas, despite claiming that the event had been canceled. “Another smoldering heap of a university,” reacted X/Twitter user and internet personality Aviva Klompas, sharing a video footage from the “teach in.” “Columbia University stated that a planned student event to celebrate the October 7 ‘Palestinian Counteroffensive’ would not be permitted to take place,” Klompas added. “Yet here they are calling murder, rape, torture and kidnapping ‘great feats’ inside the @ColumbiaSSW building.” “No doubt the university will...

Bill Ackman has claimed that Harvard president Claudine Gay was only appointed because she fitted the DEI office's criteria, after her shameful refusal to denounce campus protests calling for a Jewish genocide. The 57-year-old billionaire hedge funder has been heavily involved in the debate after expressing his views about Gay clearly on social media and calling for her resignation.

University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has issued a groveling apology for her refusal to condemn calls for the genocide of the Jewish people on campus in her remarks to Congress — as Harvard University President Pauline Gay backtracked on her testimony. In a video posted on the Ivy League’s website Wednesday, Magill tried to explain her failure by saying she was not “focused” on the issue, and said that she wanted to “be clear” that calls for genocide were “evil, plain and simple.” But she also seemingly blamed university policies and even the US Constitution for allowing the calls...

The University of Pennsylvania’s motto comes from a quote from Horace, Leges Sine Moribus Vanae — “Laws without morals are in vain.” But it is a lack of morals, of a willingness to stand up to antisemitism, that has created a “climate of fear” across campus. Demonstrations headed by “Penn Students Against the Occupation,” recognized as an official club by the university, have left students at the Philadelphia-based Ivy League school worried about whether it is a safe environment for learning. Incidents on campus have made it a flashpoint in the debate over how far protests can go.

Leaders of elite schools disgrace themselves before Congress—and expose the rot at the core of American higher education. Forget Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, now in theaters: if you want to watch an epic drama of vanity and failed leadership that ends in catastrophe, just tune in to the hearing held this week by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Summoned to account for the surging anti-Semitism on their campuses, the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania delivered a masterclass in obfuscation. When New York representative Elise Stefanik asked them whether calling for the genocide of the...

The Ivy league and their kindred so-called elite campuses may soon go the way of Disney and Bud Light. After October 7, the public was shocked at what they saw and heard on America’s campuses. Americans knew previously they were intolerant, leftwing, and increasingly non-meritocratic. But immediately after October 7—and even before the response of the Israeli Defense Forces—the sheer student delight on news of the mass murdering of Israeli victims seemed akin more to 1930s Germany than contemporary America. Indeed, not a day goes by when a university professor or student group has not spouted anti-Semitic hatred. Often, they...

Clearly, there are a lot of people out there who don't understand the meaning of diversity and tolerance. Unfortunately, quite a few happen to attend our prestigious university. And lately, diversity and tolerance have become part of a feeling of negativity that is gaining strength on this campus. What I wish to do is point out the misunderstandings about the D&T combo that have become evident over the past few weeks. First off, let's try and define diversity. Grouping together a bunch of definitions on dictionary.com, I'd say that diversity is the existence of a state of hetereogenioty at a...

And just like that, ‘context’ suddenly didn’t matter nearly as much as Claudine Gay claimed. After embarrassing herself yesterday in congressional testimony, the president of Harvard suddenly discovered that “speech crosses into conduct” was a laughable double standard when it comes to pro-Hamas speech on campuses that routinely suppress speech that dissents from progressive orthodoxy. In case you missed it, John wrote a comprehensive post about the testimony of Gay, Penn president Liz Magill, and MIT president Sally Kornbluth. Both Republicans and Democrats grilled the trio about the explosion of pro-terrorism demonstrations on their campuses and the glaring double standards...

THE CHRONICLEN OF HIGHER EDUCATION (Can only be linked to, per FR rules.)

years-long abandonment of free speech has allowed radicalism and anti-semitism to fester on campus. Where free speech dies, institutional stupidity takes its place. ... Jewish students were mobbed by pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Harvard and protesters were heard chanting for an “Intifada revolution” on UPenn’s campus this weekend — leading the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to investigate both schools for Title VI discrimination violations. ... Students retreat into echo chambers where their beliefs go unchecked, and they are readily swept down radical rabbit holes in which Zoomer TikTokers are inexplicably celebrating the philosophy of Osama bin Laden. In...

Sunday night, another horde of young people descended on yet another victim. This time, the target was a Philadelphia falafel shop owned by Israeli Jews. Per the usual modus operandi, a mob arrived at the establishment named "Goldie" and began shouting, “Goldie, Goldie, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide.” Nothing demonstrates a desire for peace like hundreds of rabid animals surrounding a falafel shop. A mob targeting businesses because they are owned by Jews? It seems to me we've seen this before. According to the New York Post, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro posted in response, “Tonight in Philly,...

On Nov. 28, I attended the event “No Peace Without Justice: A Round-Table Talk about Social Justice in Palestine,” hosted by numerous departments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). One of the speakers, Dr. Rania Masri, said: “Oct. 7 for many of us from the region was a beautiful day. It was the day in which we saw that, we saw our brothers, we saw our fathers, we saw men break out of a concentration camp.” Then speaking with pride and admiration for Hamas and their paragliders, she continued: “So for many of us, the question...