Free Republic

Feb. 6, 2005 23:24 | Updated Feb. 7, 2005 20:57 'Columbia Unbecoming' By CHANAN WEISSMANThe first screening here of a controversial documentary depicting alleged anti-Israeli bias among Columbia University faculty members has sparked debate among alumni about how best to respond to the charges. After watching Columbia Unbecoming, Lilian Siskin, who graduated from sister school Barnard College in 1943, said she "would never give another cent to the university" because of the way the administration was handling the alleged cries of academic intimidation. "I would never even consider sending a child or grandchild of mine to either Barnard or Columbia,"...

Wednesday, February 02, 2005 Ill Disposed K.C. Johnson, Brooklyn College–CUNY Over the last decade, a new requirement has emerged in teacher-training programs around the country. According to the standards outlined by the National Council for Accreditation in Teacher Education (NCATE), prospective teachers must possess the "knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to help all students learn." We can easily identify "knowledge" and "skills." But what exactly is "dispositions" theory? And why should people outside of the Education establishment be very much concerned about it? In its 2000 statement of standards, NCATE defined dispositions as "the values, commitments, and professional ethics that...

"Ending Intellectual Slavery" by Conservative author and Berkeley alumnus David Horowitz WHEN: Thursday, February 3rd TIME: 8 pm WHERE: 2050 VLSB (Map) David Horowitz will be on campus to give a speech “Ending Intellectual Slavery” which will discuss liberal indoctrination in university campuses and classrooms. Mr. Horowitz will argue that college faculty use classes as a way to inculcate their beliefs into the student population without providing the proper political balance—it will be an argument in favor of greater academic freedom. His last speech on the Berkeley campus, “The Argument Against Reparations for Slavery,” was held four years ago....

New York Magazine published a long article this week outlining the dispute between pro-Israel students at Columbia University and the overwhelmingly pro-Arab professors in the university's Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures Department. The students allege that the department's professors promote the notion that Israel is a racist, terrorist state. While the dispute has been simmering for years, it rose to the headlines four months ago when a pro-Israel organization called The David Project released a short documentary film called Columbia Unbecoming, in which 14 students and recent alumni recounted incident after incident of abuse they suffered in Columbia's...

University Treats Second Amendment Club Like Second-Class Citizens, Group Charges By Randy Hall CNSNews.com Editor January 14, 2005 (CNSNews.com) - Administrators at Kent State University in Ohio have refused to recognize a Second Amendment club as an official student group, a conservative organization claimed Friday. Students organized the group with the assistance of the Leadership Institute's Campus Leadership Program, which helps start and maintain conservative groups at colleges and universities. Officials at Kent State's Office of Campus Life refused to consider the Second Amendment Club's application for recognition, said student Luke Adams, who founded the club this past fall...

Florida’s Indian River Community College (IRCC) is engaging in a campaign of repression against a Christian student group for attempting to show Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ on campus. In November 2004, the college banned the Christian Student Fellowship (CSF) from showing the film because it was R-rated, despite the fact that the college has hosted a live performance entitled “F**king for Jesus” that describes simulated sex with “the risen Christ.” CSF students report that after their group wrote President Edwin R. Massey in protest, administrators pulled group leaders out of class and, astoundingly, demanded an apology from...

[ snip ]<>...never has the Right flourished among college kids as it does today. <>The number of College Republicans, for instance, has almost tripled, from 400 or so campus chapters six years ago, to 1,148 today, with 120,000-plus members (compared with the College Democrats’ 900 or so chapters and 100,000 members). And College Republicans are thriving even on elite campuses. “We’ve doubled in size over the last few years, to more than 400 students,” reports Evan Baehr, the square-jawed future pol heading the Princeton chapter. The number of College Republicans at Penn has also rocketed upward, says chapter president Stephanie...

Recently Albert Hunt's last column for the Wall Street Journal mentioned how he was recruited by the late and great Robert L. Bartley, who made that newspaper's editorial page unsurpassed in quality. What made the hiring of Albert Hunt especially significant was that Bartley was a staunch conservative in the Reagan tradition, while Hunt is a standard issue liberal. It was precisely for that reason that Bartley wanted Hunt to write for the Wall Street Journal, so that readers would be sure to get more than one side of the issues discussed. Many years ago, when I was teaching economics...

Occasionally one thinks that, perhaps because it has become so tedious, multiculturalism has begun to pass from the scene. Unfortunately, such thoughts seem entirely too optimistic in light of the great extent to which multiculturalist slogans have become culturally and institutionally ensconced, the great emotional and financial stake that multiculturalists have in perpetuating their visions, and the degree to which, usually under false pretenses, multiculturalists are able to initiate new believers into their sect. So it probably is still of some value to offer a dissection and critique of the ideology of multiculturalism—a dissection and critique that focuses on the...

Revealing Wesleyan John Leo In the fall of 2000, I promised my daughter the freshman that I wouldn't write about Wesleyan University (Middletown, Conn.) until she graduated. As a result, you readers learned nothing from me about the naked dorm, the transgender dorm, the queer prom, the pornography-for-credit course, the obscene sidewalk chalking, the campus club named crudely for a woman's private part, or the appearance on campus of a traveling anti-Semitic roadshow, loosely described as a pro-Palestinian conference.  Instead of hot news items like these, you usually just hear that Wesleyan is very "diverse." Newsweek once hailed the school...

The ever-clueless New York Civil Liberties Union has leaped head-first into the ongoing controversy sur rounding alleged anti-Israel bias and intimidation of students at Columbia University by siding — surprise, surprise — with the accused professors. Indeed, the NYCLU - proving that it doesn't need Norman Siegel in charge to look through the wrong end of the telescope - charges that an investigation into the students' charges is "likely to descend into an inquisition." Actually, there's little chance of that: As The New York Sun reported, Columbia President Lee Bollinger has stacked the deck of his fact-finding committee, choosing...

When you think of controversial filmmaker Michael Moore, you think of a man who is strongly associated with left-wing politics. Consequently, it should come as no surprise that Moore, even when giving speeches to a college-level stage class, will most likely mix in his political point of view. That, according to theater professor Susan Speers, who is defending her use of a University of Akron (Ohio) facility for a speech Moore gave to her class Oct. 30, just days before the Nov. 2 presidential election. University officials have pledged to investigate Speers' use of the campus's Knight Auditorium as the...

Dec. 23, 2004 11:27 | Updated Dec. 29, 2004 21:54 Non-academic debate By URIEL HEILMAN NEW YORK Deena Shanker was a freshman at Columbia College when she first encountered what has now famously been portrayed as the Ivy League university's problem of rampant bias, hostility and vilification of pro-Israel students and viewpoints in courses on the Middle East. She was in a class called "Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies," taught by Prof. Joseph Massad, and in a discussion in the spring of 2002 on Israel's military incursions into Palestinian areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Shanker said...

Tom Wolfe’s best-selling novel "I Am Charlotte Simmons" has focused unwanted attention—unwanted at least by college officials—on the sexual antics of American college students. The behavior is scandalous, but an even greater scandal is what students are being taught. This mis-education is the subject of a new book by former BreakPoint editor James Nelson Black. In Freefall of the American University, Black describes how “colleges and universities are corrupting the minds and morals of the next generation.” That’s quite an indictment, but Freefall will leave any open-minded reader realizing that the evidence supports it. As Black puts it, “the university...

Affirmative Action Grading by Mike S. Adams Townall.com | Dec. 27, 2004 First of all, let me apologize for writing you so late in the year after so many of you have gone home for the semester. Most of you thought that the semester was over and that grades had been finalized, so you didn't expect to get this mass email from your (now former) professor. But, nonetheless, I urge you to read this message carefully. It may mean a change in your grade for the semester that we just finished together.I am writing to you because a student recently...

<p>In Colorado and Indiana, a national conservative group publicizes student allegations of left-wing bias by professors. Faculty get hate mail and are pictured in mock "wanted" posters; at least one college says a teacher received a death threat.</p> <p>And at Columbia University in New York, a documentary film alleging that teachers intimidate students who support Israel draws the attention of administrators.</p>

The Conservative Revolution How To Win The Battle for College Campuses By Brendan Steinhauser Review by Ethan Davis What do you do when your college denies religious groups use of college property, tells you that certain conservative speakers aren't welcome on campus, or files amicus briefs in support of affirmative action with the Supreme Court? Form a College Republicans chapter, says Brendan Steinhauser in his new book, The Conservative Revolution: How to Win the Battle for College Campuses. Steinhauser's book is a comprehensive and meticulous manual for conservative college students anywhere in the country. His ideas range from the essential...

CSUS program is training bilingual teachers to serve state's students of color At first, the Bilingual/Multicultural Education Department didn't seem like a good fit for Patricia Jurado. As a student at California State University, Sacramento, she knew she wanted to be a teacher. And for many bilingual Latinas like her, the College of Education's BMED program would have been an obvious choice. But Jurado had not previously celebrated her Mexican American background. She hadn't bought into the bilingual education philosophy, and she knew her uncles back home in conservative Yuba City would scoff at a multicultural education program. Then she...

Most American parents would be outraged if they knew how the education world's multiculturalists are trying to shape new teachers before they go to work in public schools.     Surveys by the nonpartisan organization Public Agenda have shown that parents still believe in America as an overwhelmingly good country, and they want their children to believe that as well. [snip] The multiculturalists, by stark contrast, do not see the United States at all as a good country with common values worth transmitting. They grossly divide Americans into "oppressors" (all whites of European descent) and the "oppressed" (all persons of color...

At the University of North Carolina, three incoming freshmen sued over a reading assignment they say offends their Christian beliefs.     In Colorado and Indiana, a national conservative group publicized student accusations of left-wing bias by professors. Faculty get hate mail and are pictured in mock "wanted" posters.     The episodes differ in important ways, but all touch on an issue of growing prominence on college campuses. Traditionally, clashes over academic freedom have pitted politicians or administrators against instructors who wanted to express their opinions and teach as they saw fit. But increasingly, it is students who are invoking academic freedom. They...