Is the pushback against the bigots in academia finally and actually becoming real?
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all
the inhabitants thereof.” Photo credit: William Zhang
To end this week on a positive note, a plethora of stories in the past few days strongly suggest that the bigoted status quo in most universities in America is finally facing some real pushback, pushback that includes the arrests of lawbreaking protesters, actual budget cuts to universities for having racial quotas and promoting race hatred, and the passing of new legislation to better enforce the civil rights laws that have been on the books since the 1960s.
First we have the news out of Pennsylvania. Yesterday the state legislature, led by the Republican caucus, voted down a $33.5 million budget item for the University of Pennsylvania’s veterinary school, doing so expressly because of that university’s apparent toleration of anti-Semitism as well as its extensive Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) program.
Annual state aid for Penn’s veterinary school normally draws strong bipartisan support in Pennsylvania’s Legislature and, earlier Wednesday, had won overwhelming approval in the Republican-controlled Senate.
However, it failed late Wednesday night in the House after the Republican floor leader spoke against it, saying Penn must do more to make it clear that it opposes antisemitism. “Until more is done at the university in terms of rooting out, calling out and making an official stance on antisemitism being against the values of the university, I cannot in good conscience support this funding,” GOP House Minority Leader Bryan Cutler said during floor debate.
Though the funding bill was supported by the entire Democratic Party caucus (whose base pushes these bigoted policies and so at heart so do the Democrats) as well as about 25% of the Republican caucus, it failed to gain the needed two-thirds majority to pass.
While this vote is a start, it hardly does enough. The state government still funds UPenn’s racial quota program, which includes programs that give favored treatment to women and minorities while discriminating against others, merely because of their sex or skin color.
Meanwhile at Brown University in Rhode Island, college officials called the police to have forty-one pro-Hamas students arrested for occupying a building.
“To expedite the process and avoid processing arrests in two locations, Brown DPS arranged with the Providence Police Department to conduct all arrest processing on-site in University Hall,” University Spokesperson Brian Clark wrote in a statement to The Herald. Students were “photographed, fingerprinted and provided their arrest paperwork in lieu of being detained in physical custody.”
“The disruption to secure buildings is not acceptable, and the University is prepared to escalate the level of criminal charges for future incidents of students occupying secure buildings,” Clark added.
For decades universities have refused to arrest or even punish in any way leftist demonstrators. They could riot, attack speakers, even burn down buildings, and the worst that would happen to them is a minor reprimand in their student file. At Brown for example in 2013 it allowed a mob to shout down the police commissioner from New York. In 2016 it allowed students to shout down a white performer because she was singing songs from India. In 2017 it offered segregated dining areas for blacks and Muslims, then followed up this bigoted policy with an announcement that students could “self-identify” as persons of color.
The reaction by college officials in these earlier cases was to kow-tow to the bigots. Its reaction now has been refreshingly different. The pro-Hamas students had demanded Brown agree to blacklist Israel in all ways, from investment to even admissions. When college officials refused to bow to those demands — which were issued under a threat of violence — these baby tyrants then threw their tantrum, occupying the building and threatening to stay until the university capitulated.
In the past colleges would routinely do so. That Brown instead responded responsibly and forcefully is good news. That firm action suggests its officials have realized that if they hadn’t, they might be stained with the same anti-Semitic and bigoted reputation that many other Ivy League schools now suffer from.
Nor would that stain be undeserved.
Time to once again enforce the laws against
discrimination and segregation
Then we have the news out of Oklahoma, where the governor on December 13, 2023 signed an excecutive order abolishing the entire DEI bureaucracy at all public universities. This order follows similar actions in Iowa, Florida, and Texas.
It will be wise to be skeptical about such bans. University officials have been very adept at renaming and reorganizing these bigoted programs to hide them as they continue their work unimpeded. Unless such bans are linked directly to funding, cutting the money that is budgeted for the DEI offices, it is likely these orders or new laws have no teeth.
In the case of this order [pdf] in Oklahoma, however, it appears it have teeth, since it forbids the spending of any funds for these departments, and also applies the ban to state agencies as well. While university and government bureaucrats might try to get around it, its bluntness I suspect will make that difficult.
All of these actions are positive news, but they are only a start. We need to see aggressive action against this new Nazi bigotry at all levels, beginning with the voters. The Democrats who support DEI and its racist quotas need to go. They have demonstrated that they are unfit for government office, because they clearly want to use that power to favor some people over others, solely because of the race, religion, or sex.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Bob,
This is exactly the quality reporting that I do not see often enough, much less in such detail, from any of the other “news” outlets. Here is a critical topic that Americans need to hear and discuss honestly. But, to most of the main-stream media, it is seen as a toxic, “third rail” subject that they just run from.
You’ve earned your holiday Zelle bonus from me early this year.
Tom
Related: I want to share this slice from the real world dealing with real people regarding how many of them think and act who are a product of the now clearly racist and antisemitic radical Leftist education machine.
A customer comes in (A Liberal, nurse, professional. She by her own words about her personal vision to me, is “going to save the world”. She constantly locks herself out of her car or loses her credit card, I am surprised she has not run herself over yet and she is going to save the world? Oy. This is their mentality).
She says to me, unsolicited: I hope you are not going to vote for Trump, you would be better to stay home.
Why?: Well, if he gets in again, he….and I finished it for her….will be a dictator?
Yes!… and then I continued………He said so, on day one right?
YES!
She goes on: I am so nervous and concerned for my nephews and nieces that he might get in again. You know if he does, he will never leave!
I ask her: If that is true, why did he leave the last time?
Well, they told him he had to leave. (Who is they? I ask to myself; I did not want to confuse her)
And next time? I ask.
He will have all of his people in place, and he won’t leave.
This is what we are dealing with in America today, this is the product of the university indoctrination industry.
And then of course we have the Harvard educated, and I loved this characterization of the mayor of Boston who is a member of the “Wu Klux Klan”, racist and divider in chief, Michelle Wu.
Remember, it’s you, not them. They are highly educated and need to direct you and your life because you are not qualified and are racist. https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/taught-to-hate-guess-who
Can’t make it up because it’s true.
Tom: Just got it and thank you. It appears that when all is said and done, my income this year for my work here will be only a tiny bit less than last year, for which I am most grateful.
What baffles me is why the mainstream press can’t do this work anymore. All I really do is do scan a bunch of aggregrete news sites for stories, then do some very simple web searches to check the facts and give my reporting some additional depth. It’s all there for anyone to read.
Part of the press’s problem is they have a blind formula for why they do anything, and refuse to allow any deviation. The work not only becomes sterile, the formula discourages creativity and enthusiasm.
The other part of the problem we all know: Everyone is an avowed hack for the Democratic Party and is forbidden to stray from the assigned propaganda path. And if you are not and dare to stray, you will be gone.
“students could ‘self-identify’ as persons of color”
For today I’m self-identifying as a smokin’ hot black chick named Ja-Leenda.
As a woman of color I have vast wisdom and experience of the suffering me and my black sisters have gone through at the hands of racist white people.
I’m now black. Where are my reparations, honkies?
I’m black too.
And you’re racist if you question me.
“ Everyone is an avowed hack for the Democratic Party …”
Call it the “Democrat Party”. That really hacks them off.
they forgot to wipe this off the servers…..
“Clayton Bigsby, the World’s Only Black, White Supremacist”
Dave Chapelle Comedy Central
https://youtu.be/BLNDqxrUUwQ
(9:08)
“Those who eat their fill speak to the hungry of wonderful times to come.”
Bertolt Brecht
Pink Floyd live at Pompeii
Animation from “Dinner for Few”
“One of These Days” […I’m going to cut you, into little pieces…]
https://youtu.be/YZCqh0beUwM
5:32
The fully indoctrinated and on board radical Left anti and un Americans (Mostly Democrats and some RINO’s) are non plussed about the entire thing.
https://nypost.com/2023/12/16/news/boston-mayor-michelle-wu-shows-off-photo-from-electeds-of-color-holiday-party-after-defending-gathering/
You will be required to get over it and adapt, not them.
And this is what they are relying on to help “Transform” America and the world:
https://nypost.com/2023/12/15/news/radical-michigan-imam-urges-muslims-to-embrace-jihad/
The question is, transform it into what exactly?
Just a world where “The white man” and his flavor of morality and leadership and abuse of power is no more. In trade for someone else flavor of abuse of power, and they are very overt and in your face about it. Not even a hint of embarrassment at their raw push for dominance.
How do you fight racism and bigotry with racism and bigotry? Seems counter intuitive, the only resulting result can be continued racism and bigotry. No? And don’t forget the required retribution and punishment for past abuses. You know, colonialism and slavery.
And that is the point, this is about destroying entirely what is, the most powerful engine of individual freedom and wealth in trade for “equity” and what appears to be second-rate, second-string humans.
Does that sound too harsh? Too judgmental? Not Christian? The real truth can be a female dog.
Well, that may be so but if you desire to prosper and be free in the future that truth is a raw reminder of their truth to those who are still unconscious related to these now increasing dependent numbers of what are essentially human parasites and their exclusive club.
And I will add here: If America was allowed by the IMO treasonous controlling political powers that be to run as designed and not purposefully hamstrung America would good, bad or otherwise truly dominate the entire planet and solar system.
China and Russia? Only if they freed their people, and that will NEVER happen. It cannot happen by design.
To my point:
“Chicago Mayor to Punish High Achieving Students by Eliminating City’s Selective-Enrollment Schools in the Name of ‘Equity’ ”
These parasites are disgraceful, and its right in your face.
How can they promote such mediocrity, even anti education and look themselves in the mirror?
Disgraceful humans, disgraceful Americans.
An update to my post above:
FLABBERGASTED: To overwhelm with shock, surprise, or wonder.
The woman / customer who I interacted with earlier in the week came back and she asks me: Were you mocking me when we were talking about Trump?
No, no I was not. You began the conversation about how I should just stay home instead of voting if I intended to vote for Trump, and I was genuinely interested in why you said that.
She says: But I do not understand how you could like Trump he is sooo horrible! The way he talks, the way he looks, he is terrible! He is going to be a dictator!
And then I told her that in my opinion Trump objectively was the greatest modern-day president.
And at that moment I understood what the word FLABBERGASTED meant.
Her mouth was open and she was mumbling to herself, but nothing intelligible was coming out. Then she told me that she could not believe what she was hearing.
She asked me: What has he done good in America?
I ignored her question and asked her: What do you think about the Democrat party purposefully conducting an invasion of America’s border for political control purposes?
That is not at all what is happening! She said.
At which point another customer came in and was holding the door open and she departed.
FLABBERGASTED.
This is what a portion of America has bouncing around between their ears.
And that should scare the hell out of everyone.