Tag: blacklists

Modern bigotry in Canada: Simon Fraser University declares math “racist”

1:52 pm

One of many such workshops at Simon Fraser U
One of many such workshops at Simon Fraser University

The modern dark age: Simon Fraser University in Canada (SFU) has an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion learning group in its math office, and it appears that this office is today running a seminar, in partnership with the Simon Fraser Public Interest Group (SFPIRG), asking the important question, “How can math be racist?”, led by two modern “scholars” with no training in math at all.

Those set to speak at the seminar are Hannah Ghaderi, Co-Directory of Research & Education of the interest group, and Chantelle Spicer, currently the Director of Engagement [of SFU’s math Equity, Diversity and Inclusion learning group]. Neither of these individuals appear to have any professional background in math. Mathematician James Lindsay told Human Events that it is likely better that these two DEI professionals did not have a math background.

Lindsay said: “They don’t need mathematics backgrounds. They have critical consciousness, which means they know how racism and transphobia are hidden in everything, even things they don’t know anything about.”

No, actual math has nothing to do with this seminar. SFPIRG makes a big deal on its website about how it isn’t partisan, but yet its mission is “to engage students in social and environmental justice.” Or as it states in great length one paragraph later:
» Read more

17 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Licensing authorities use power to deny doctors freedom of speech

1:31 pm

Doctors Eric Hensen and John Littell
Blacklisted doctors Eric Hensen (l) and John Littell

They’re coming for you next: Two stories today illustrate how government medical licensing authorities have used their power inappropriately and very oppressively in the past three years to silence any dissent in the medical community.

If a doctor dared to question the now very clearly misguided medical policies of government during the Wuhan panic, state medical boards were quite willing to take away their license to practice.

Our first story began when Texas’s Republican governor Greg Abbot imposed a mask mandate in 2020. Dr. Eric Hensen refused to comply, recognizing that masks do nothing to prevent transmission and actually carry health risks in themselves.
» Read more

2 comments

Blacklist followup: Rhode Island school district fails to respond to lawsuit accusing it of discriminating against Christians

11:44 am

Rhode Island: haven to oppression
Oppressive Rhode Island

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Because a Rhode Island school district in Providence failed to respond to a lawsuit accusing it of discriminating against Christians, it has now defaulted and awaits a final judgment against it.

Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit against the school district on March 10, 2023. The Providence Public School District did not answer the complaint by the court’s deadline. Yesterday, Liberty Counsel filed an application to enter a default against the school district which will allow Liberty Counsel to seek a final judgment against the defendants. Today, the federal court entered the default against the district and its superintendent. Having raised no defense to the lawsuit, the district will be subject to a judgment requiring it to provide equal access to the Good News Clubs. Liberty Counsel will also pursue attorney’s fees and costs against the defendants.

This is a followup on a March 2023 blacklist column. » Read more

7 comments

Tennessee’s Republicans move to represent the left, not their constituents

12:21 pm

What Tennessee's Republicans are doing
A picture of Tennessee’s Republicans

Capitulating as always: In response to calls from Tennessee’s very small and very minor Democratic Party — including its normal mobs of screaming protesters, some of which routinely threaten violence — the Republican governor of Tennessee, Bill Lee, is now demanding new gun laws aimed at making it easier to take guns away from Tennessee citizens.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee called Tuesday for state lawmakers to pass a law aimed at preventing guns from getting in the hands of people who are a danger to themselves or others.

The Republican governor also said he will sign a new executive order later Tuesday aimed at strengthening background checks on firearm purchases. “I’m asking the General Assembly to bring forward an order of protection law,” Lee said in a news conference at a Nashville police station. “A new, strong order of protection law will provide the broader population cover, safety, from those who are a danger to themselves or the population. “This is our moment to lead and to give the people of Tennessee what they deserve.” [emphasis mine]

Yeah, he wants to give it to them, good and hard. And apparently he has support from the Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton, and Republican Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, who is the Senate speaker.
» Read more

13 comments

What will the Republicans controlling Tennessee’s statehouse do now that Nashville’s City Council has reinstated their expelled representative?

2:04 pm

Riot in Tennessee Statehouse
L to R, Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson stand at
the podium, using a bullhorn to lead protester chants.

Bring a gun to a knife fight? When the Tennessee House first moved to expel two members, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, because of their participation in a riot that shut down the legislature on March 30, 2023, I noted the following:

Note that this gigantic Republican majority [75 to 24] reflects the wishes of the voters of Tennessee. If that majority fails to expel these three misbehaving Democrats, just because it is intimidated by the loud and almost violent actions of small minority, it will then prove not only how worthless it is, but that the voters themselves might not have the courage to stand up to these leftist thugs. As I say, the elected officials reflect the wishes of the voters. Weakness now in the statehouse will indicate weakness at all levels.

Subsequently the House did expel two of the three offending representatives (the third surviving by a single vote). In response, the Nashville city council moving to quickly reinstate its expelled representative, Justin Jones. It is expected that tomorrow the local county commission that Justin Pearson represented will reinstate him as well.

We have now reached the bottom line: What will the Republicans who control the statehouse in Tennessee by very wide margins do?

The immediate answer appears to be to capitulate.
» Read more

29 comments

Pushback: Catholic college moves to end its need for any federal funding

3:00 pm

Belmont Abbey College

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Belmont Abbey College, a small private Catholic college in North Carolina, has begun a major fund-raising campaign to free itself and its students from any need to obtain what it calls “intrusive” federal funding.

According to their fund-raising website,

Without the ability to remain financially independent and secure, we place our faith-based practices at risk from a federal government both increasingly intrusive to private institutions and increasingly hostile to faith. The mission of Belmont Abbey College is rooted in a desire to fill society with graduates prepared to restore the culture for the greater glory of God and create a world where charity and goodness thrive.

Their goal is to raise $55 million.
» Read more

14 comments

Pushback: University president forced out because she fired professor for including Muhammad images in classwork

1:00 pm

Mohammad meeting Gabriel
One of the two works of art, “Mohammed receiving revelation
from the angel Gabriel,” that got Prater fired.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: The president of Hamline University in Minnesota, Fayneese Miller, has now announced her early retirement after the school’s faculty demanded her resignation in January when she dismissed a professor for showing images of Muhammad as part of an art class.

That teacher, Erika Lopez Prater, immediately sued.

The lawsuit, which Lopez Prater’s lawyers said on Tuesday will soon be filed in court, reiterated the professor’s previous statement that she had offered warnings before showing the image – including in the syllabus and immediately before showing the image – and had volunteered to work with students uncomfortable with viewing the depictions.

The suit has alleged the university subjected Lopez Prater to religious discrimination and defamation, and damaged her professional and personal reputation. “Among other things, Hamline, through its administration, has referred to Dr Lopez Prater’s actions as ‘undeniably Islamophobic,’” her attorneys said in a statement.

» Read more

13 comments

Pushback: Missouri school libraries sue to keep porno on their shelves; Missouri lawmakers zero out library budget

4:57 pm

Cody Smith
Missouri House Republican Cody Smith

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In 2022 the Missouri legislature passed a law that made it illegal to provide any student with books containing images “‘showing human masturbation, deviate sexual intercourse,’ ‘sexual intercourse, direct physical stimulation of genitals, sadomasochistic abuse,’ or showing human genitals.” The aim of the law was to put reasonable limits on the kind of material available in school libraries, and was passed in response to the recent nationwide effort by teachers and librarians to include such smut in these places.

A normal person’s response should be, “Gee, why do we need a law? What sane adult would ever give this stuff to kids? Isn’t that why we have a movie rating system?” A normal person would also note that anyone who did want to distribute this kind of porno to kids is really nothing more than a pedophile.

Well, it looks like the Missouri Association of School Librarians, the Missouri Library Association, and the ACLU are all pedophiles, when you get right down to it. These organizations immediately banded together to sue to overturn the law. They want to give kids porno.

On March 28, 2023 the Missouri House responded in turn to these pedophiles by passing a budget that cuts the entire $4.5 million budget for all public libraries. The cut was put forth by the House budget chairman Cody Smith, who said this:
» Read more

7 comments

Judges expand hiring boycott of elite law colleges that allow violent protests and censorship

12:24 pm

Judge James Ho
Judge James Ho

Two federal judges have now expanded their hiring boycott to include Stanford Law School along with Yale Law School because the administrators at both schools have refused to punish violent student protesters who acted to silence others.

The judges, James C. Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Elizabeth Branch, a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, will hire no graduates from these schools, thus reducing the whole reason for going there. Law students graduate hoping this diploma will get them jobs working for important judges, an early step to becoming a judge themselves.

The question that Ho and Branch raise, however, is whether any judge would want to hire any students from these particular schools. As Judge Ho noted in a speech on April 1st at the annual meeting of the Texas Review of Law & Politics.
» Read more

3 comments

Pushback: University will hire no one who supports “critical race theory”

11:41 am

SouthernWesleyan University: still a supporter of Christianity and western civilization
Still a supporter of Christianity and western civilization

Bring a gun to a knife fight: According to the president of Southern Wesleyan University, it refuses to hire anyone who supports “critical race theory”, and instead seeks out scholars who support the basic tenets of Christianity and western civilization.

[A]s Southern Wesleyan University President Bill Barker enters his eighth month at the helm of the private, four-year institution, he said he has made it a priority to educate critically on critical race theory. … “I made it very clear where SWU stands on critical race theory, and we made it very clear in our hiring processes,” Barker said in a Zoom interview with The College Fix. “Personnel is policy.”

“We’re not hiring people – and I’ve been clear since I came here and the Board of Trustees has supported this – who endorse critical race theory. We will have the courage to let faculty or staff go if they are teaching critical race theory.” Barker took the helm of the South Carolina-based campus in July 2022.

Barker’s policy is more than words. » Read more

4 comments

Midnight repost: Genocide is coming to America

12:02 am

Rick, stating the truth in Casablanca
Will the murder and mutilation of innocent children
finally wake Americans up?

Considering the recent horrible murders of three young school children as well as three adults at Covenant School, a Christian elementary school in Nashville, merely because some sexually confused woman (not a “trans-person” as the insane insist we call her) decided it was her right to murder people, I thought it might be worthwhile to post my essay below from July 2020. In it I predicted that mass murder by the left was only around the corner, if the good people of America did not finally wake up and take seriously the madness that is taking over that part of the political spectrum.

I am still unsure whether ordinary decent Americans have finally awakened, but it appears the recent school violence might finally be providing the spark. We shall see.

————————-
Genocide is coming to America

In my last visit to Israel in 2018, my brother and sister-in-law took me sight-seeing to the northern parts of Israel near the Sea of Galilee. On our first night, we stayed at the home of one of their older friends, a man in his seventies.

That night we sat around their kitchen table so that they could catch up on family matters. At one point in the conversation our host reminisced about an older woman, now gone, who he had known in his childhood in the 1950s who had lived in Germany before and during World War II and had survived a concentration camp.

To paraphrase the story he told us, what this woman always remembered most starkly about that time, especially in the 1930s, was how difficult it was to get German friends who were not Jewish to believe the horrors she and other Jews were going through. To her, their calm nonchalant dismissal of the Nazi bigotry and oppression of Jews — too unbelievable to take seriously — was what had horrified her the most. Even twenty years later, it was this dismissal that appalled her the most, despite her time in a concentration camp and the death she had seen around her.

As he told us this story, what struck me was how similar my own experience has been. Time after time for the past four decades my liberal friends and relatives have refused to believe anything I say to them — always based on actual events — about politics and the growing corruption and bigotry within the Democratic Party. Like those decent Germans in the 1930s, these decent Americans find reasons to quickly dismiss what I say, without making any effort to find out if there is any merit to it.

In fact, less than two days after this very conversation it happened again. » Read more

7 comments

NASA goes woke!

9:39 am

NASA yesterday announced that it has named two individuals, based on their race and gender, to lead the agency’s effort to promote the Marxist and racist Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) movement.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced Monday he is taking additional steps forward to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) at the agency. Nelson named Steve Shih to serve in a new position as the agency’s first Diversity Ambassador and selected Elaine Ho as the next associate administrator for the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity at NASA Headquarters in Washington, effective immediately.

…As diversity ambassador, Shih will further NASA’s DEIA initiatives by building key strategic alliances with external partners, enabling NASA to continue being a model agency and leader for DEIA. In this role, Shih will engage NASA’s partners – including across the government, private sector, academia, and non-governmental organizations – to learn and promote best practices for NASA to recruit, hire, engage, and retain the most talented individuals from all backgrounds and life experiences. With his experience leading the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity since 2017, Shih will build on his three decades of federal expertise and help NASA continue to enable everyone to contribute inclusively to NASA and to the United States.

As Shih transitions to the role of diversity ambassador, Ho will bring extensive DEIA expertise to the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity. She most recently has served as the deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement, leading a wide-ranging portfolio of projects benefiting students, universities, and educational institutions across the country to inspire, engage, and educate the Artemis Generation.

To further prove NASA’s commitment to favor some races over others, the agency also announced yesterday that it is committing $3 million to support “seven Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and one Predominantly Black Institution (PBI).”

Note the focus on race, not achievement. While it is nice to help the disadvantaged, these programs are not really aimed at that goal. Instead, this entire DEI movement is designed to give power to specific races, to the detriment of others. Or to put it more bluntly, it is a race-based apartheid system that encourages race hatred and resentment.

It is also probably illegal, based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Of course, the law is now irrelevant when it comes to the new racism. Supporters of DEI are allowed to break it whenever they want, because clearly they are superior to all others and have that right.

Finally, this stuff has absolutely nothing to do with NASA’s fundamental purpose, which is to help American industry more successfully explore space. It is instead a return to the Obama administration’s policy of making NASA’s most important priority that of helping minorities. Then it was Muslims, now it is the alphabet soup of LBGQTBIPOCZXYZ (and so on).

8 comments

Pushback: One doctor’s experience gives us all a ray of hope

1:52 pm

In the three years since the beginning of what I think should be called the Wuhan panic, the civilized world was overwhelmed by a tidal wave of mindless emotional terror, resulting in a never-ending stream of terrible COVID policy decisions — from social distancing to masks to lockdowns to jab mandates — that ended up killing tens of thousands unnecessarily, while trampling on the liberties and rights that western civilization had once consider sacrosanct.

During that panic a large number of individuals, including myself and most of the conservative press, desperately tried to fight that panic with hard data, noting repeatedly that masks accomplished nothing, that social distancing was a sham, that lockdowns only destroyed lives and businesses, and that mandates of any kind (especially in connection with the COVID jab) were misguided and dangerous.

All to no avail. The power-hungry were in charge, controlling all the major branches of government as well as its health bureaucracy, and these people were eager to use COVID epidemic as a vehicle for gaining power. The fear they engendered in the general public, long used to relying on these people for accurate information, caused that public to buy into that fear, and accede to the power grab by these government officials.

Doctor Robert Lending
Doctor Robert Lending.

One person who tried mightily throughout the panic to focus solely on the data was my own doctor, Robert Lending. Each week he would issue a detailed COVID report, documenting at length the actual statistics as well as the most recent research on the best treatment methods as well as those that were failures. I have quoted his reports several times previously on Behind the Black, always with permission, because his approach was so fact-based and devoid of partisan politics. His only concern was to find the best way to treat his patients.

I have also quoted Lending repeatedly because he contrasted so starkly with my previous doctor, Charles Michieli, who when I asked his assistant in April 2020 if I could work out some accommodation for me regarding masks, as I had both health and ethical reasons for not wearing one, Michieli simply responded by sending me a letter firing me as a patient. So much for putting patients first, and doing no harm.

Lending’s own experience during the entire panic was sometimes as disturbing. Though he always treated all patients regardless of politics or their own COVID fears, his insistence on logic sometimes enraged some patients to the point that they quit his practice. For example, back in June 2020, when the George Floyd riots were occurring, he wrote the following in his twelfth update:
» Read more

11 comments

The invulnerability of today’s academic blacklist culture

2:22 pm

Tirien Steinbach: in favor of censorship and mob rule
Stanford’s Tirien Steinbach:
in favor of censorship and mob rule

They’re coming for you next: In order to best understand how difficult it will be to regain the free and open society that was once the United States, we need only look at recent events at the Stanford Law School.

On March 9, 2023 a mob of students and faculty, led by Tirien Steinbach, the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion dean, shouted down U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan when he tried to give a lecture about the law for the school’s chapter of the Federalist Society.

You can watch a video of this mob action at the link, where Steinbach actually took the podium away from Duncan to order to give a speech defending the mob and agreeing with their effort to silence him.

The story has gotten ample coverage in the press, including the general reaction from outside the school. For example, in Texas and in California action has been proposed to bar the students involved from getting law licenses.

The law school itself initially responded very weakly, simply sending a letter of apology to Duncan.
» Read more

8 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Black DEI administrator fired by college for demanding accuracy and color-blind policies

1:18 pm

Tabia Lee
Tabia Lee

They’re coming for you next: Tabia Lee, the faculty director for the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Education [OESE] at De Anza College in California, was denied tenure and fired from her job when she repeatedly demanded historical accuracy and color-blind policies from both her department and the rest of the college.

“Historical accuracy and color-blind policies” from a modern college run by leftists? It is to laugh.

Tabia Lee is a black woman who had been an adjunct professor at De Anza when she got the job to run part of the OESE department.

After years of working as a middle-school teacher and an adjunct professor, and founding a network to help minority teachers attain national board certification, Lee was excited get a tenure-track position at De Anza, where her job includes designing workshops to promote inclusion. “I researched them, and I thought we had similar values around diversity, equity and anti-racism,” she said. “I was selected, and I was like, wow, this is a dream come true.”

Instead, Lee found herself constantly harassed and slandered because she tried to bring to her work an even-handed philosophy that attempted to deal with the problems of racial conflict fairly. For example, when Jewish students and faculty members told her they had experienced anti-Semitism on campus, Lee tried to organize a campus event to discuss the problem.
» Read more

9 comments

Pushback: Doctors blacklisted by government for disagreeing on its COVID mandate policies now fighting back

2:04 pm

Written by many of the doctors of the Norfolk Group
Correct from the start despite government censorship,
and written by many of the same doctors of the Norfolk Group

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Eight high-ranking doctors, many who were censored and blacklisted by the government and big social media outlets for daring to disagree with the government’s lockdown, masking,, and COVID jab mandates, have now issued a detailed report, dubbed the Norfolk Group report, outlining the many errors of those policies, as well as offering what the scientists call “a blueprint” for moving forward. From their introduction:

In separate chapters we summarize key background information and propose specific questions about failures to protect older high-risk Americans, about school closures, collateral lockdown harms, lack of robust public health data collected and/or made available, misleading risk communication, downplaying infection-acquired immunity, masks, testing, vaccine efficacy and safety, therapeutics, and epidemiological modeling.

We chose not to discuss economic issues, although we recognize that negative effects on the economy have long-term negative effects on public health. We have also chosen not to engage in issues regarding media handling of the pandemic, nor questions of how, when and why the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated. Public health responses to a pandemic are devised and implemented independently of viral origin.

» Read more

5 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Vermont’s organization of principals bans Christian school for being Christian

1:16 pm

Mid Vermont Christian School: banned for supporting Christianity

They’re coming for you next: One month after administrators of Mid Vermont Christian School decided to default a game against a public high school girls team that had a boy in woman’s clothing as a player, citing safety and religious concerns, the Vermont Principals’ Association moved to ban that Christian school from all sports and sponsored activities.

Jay Nichols, the executive director of the Vermont Principals’ Association, said the organization’s 15-member executive board was unanimous in its decision. “If you don’t want to follow VPA rules, that’s fine,” Nichols said. “But then you’re just not a VPA member. It’s fairly simple. That’s really all we’re gonna really say about it.” [emphasis mine]

In its letter to Mid Vermont Christian, the VPA stated “…the school’s actions do not meet the expectations of the VPA’s 1st and 2nd policy, Commitment to Racial, Gender-Fair, and Disability Awareness and Policy of Gender Identity, respectively.”

If you want to know in detail what VPA’s 1st and 2nd policies are, you can read them here. The key quote is this:
» Read more

13 comments

Pushback? University of North Carolina pretends to ban ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ requirements in hiring

11:51 am

Failure Theater!

They’re coming for you next: On February 23, 2023 the board of governors of the University of North Carolina voted to ban all requirements that applicants in hiring and admissions make statements advocating the racist political agenda of “diversity, equity and inclusion” [DEI].

The board stated the university “shall neither solicit nor require an employee or applicant for academic admission or employment to affirmatively ascribe to or opine about beliefs, affiliations, ideals, or principles regarding matters of contemporary political debate or social action as a condition to admission, employment, or professional advancement,” according to the resolution. An employee or applicant also can’t “be solicited or required to describe his or her actions in support of, or in opposition to, such beliefs, affiliations, ideals, or principles.”

According to the now-banned policy [pdf], anyone who wanted to either go to UNC as a student, or be hired or promoted there as a teacher, had to prove they had made a “positive contribution to DEI efforts.”
» Read more

7 comments

Pushback: Smithsonian ordered to no longer violate the First Amendment

3:36 pm

The evil hat that Air & Space banned
The evil hat that Air & Space officials banned

Pushback: The Smithsonian Institution, which runs the Air & Space museum as well as other museums in Washington, D.C., has been ordered by the courts to stop violating the First Amendment, as it did when on January 20, 2023 it harassed and ejected students from a pro-life group, there as part of their participation in the annual March for Life demonstration, because they were wearing wool caps that said “pro-life” on them.

According to the consent order [pdf], the Smithsonian expressed “regret” for the event and promised to “remind all security officers stationed at NASM [National Air & Space Museum] of the rights of visitors.”

The order however does not simply accept the museum’s expression of regret. It specifically enjoins the Smithsonian and its employees “from prohibiting visitors to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum from wearing hats or other clothing with messages, including religious and political speech” and requires it to distribute the consent order to “all security officers stationed at NASM, as well as other Smithsonian personnel who interact with the public, including volunteers and museum staff, within 7 days.” It also orders the museum to tell its security officers that their behavior on January 20th was wrong.
» Read more

8 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Rhode Island school district blacklists Christian afterschool club because it is Christian

1:24 pm

Rhode Island: haven to oppression
Oppressive Rhode Island

They’re coming for you next: The Providence school district in Rhode Island has now been sued by the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) for unfairly blacklisting CEF’s afterschool Good News clubs from using school facilities for meetings,

For nearly two years, the Providence Public School District has blocked CEF Rhode Island from hosting its elementary school Good News Clubs on district school facilities. However, other organizations such as Boys and Girls Clubs, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, YMCA, and Girls on the Run are given free use of school facilities for after school programs.

Note too that the school district had already approved CEF’s Good News clubs in 2019. According to the lawsuit [pdf], filed by the non-profit legal firm Liberty Counsel:

The District approved CEF Rhode Island’s August 2019 Rental of School Facilities application, allowing CEF Rhode Island to lead an afterschool Good News Club at William D’Abate Elementary School for the 2019–2020 school year, without any facility rental fee. Forty-eight children signed up for the club, but the club could only accommodate twenty children due to space limitations at the school.

» Read more

10 comments
1 … 8 9 10 11 12 … 35