Sunday, July 15, 2007

New way to fight campus antisemitism

At the University of California, Irvine, a Muslim student group is permitted every year to hold a week-long event on campus. Sometimes the event is titled "Israel Awareness Week," sometimes "Zionist Awareness Week," or sometimes "Anti-Zionist Week." This past year the event was titled "Israel Apartheid Resurrected," and the university allowed the group to extend the program for an extra week.

This event has nothing to do with educating the community about Israel or Zionism, said Susan Tuchman, director of the Zionist Organization of America's Center for Law and Justice (CLJ). Instead, she said, "it is a week-long opportunity to bash Jews." Tuchman, whose work for the CLJ led to landmark findings and recommendations protecting Jewish college students from bigotry on campus, addressed the Pittsburgh chapter of the ZOA at its annual meeting on Wednesday evening, June 27. She cited the annual UC Irvine event as just one example of the type of anti-Semitism facing Jewish college students in the 21st century.

"Campus anti-Semitism is a serious problem," Tuchman said, "but the good news is there is a legal tool to address it." That legal tool is Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Thanks in part to the efforts of Tuchman, anti-Semitism can now be challenged under Title VI.

Typically, she said, campus anti-Semitism is expressed as hateful rhetoric against Israel and Zionism. The perpetrators claim they are just engaging in First Amendment-protected political discourse. Tuchman stressed that she would "never suggest that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic. It's not. It is perfectly appropriate to engage in heated debate about what's going on in the Middle East."

The problem, she said, is that "Israel is being singled out and vilified." The offenders are not just speaking in distortions, she said, but often in "outright falsehoods." It is this brand of speech that is equivalent to anti-Semitism. This type of anti-Semitic rhetoric happens at all varieties of colleges and universities, from small private schools, to large state universities, to community colleges. And it happens in and out of the classroom.

At San Francisco State University, the Muslim Student Union was permitted to circulate a flier with a blood libel cartoon. The cartoon depicted a baby with the caption, "Palestinian Children Meat - Slaughtered According to Jewish Rites Under American License," patently implying that Jews kill Palestinian children for ritualistic purposes.

At UC Irvine, which, according to Tuchman, has had frequent incidences of anti-Semitism, posters have been displayed on campus equating the Star of David to a swastika, or depicting the Star of David dripping with blood. During its recent "Israel Apartheid Resurrected Week," a member of the Muslim group sponsoring the event was permitted to stand in the center of campus, and through amplified speakers, pronounce: "You [the Jews] are the new Nazis.... Your days are numbered. We will fight you until we are martyred or victorious." University officials did nothing in response to this demonstration, nor in response to the destruction of a Holocaust memorial, which followed the speech.

In a letter to the chancellor a UC Irvine student wrote, "I am terrified for anyone to find out [that I am Jewish.]. Today I felt threatened that if students knew that I am Jewish and that I support a Jewish state, I would be attacked physically." The chancellor never responded to the student's letter. Another administrator, however, did respond. He suggested that the student visit the counseling center on campus to help her work through her feelings. [What nasty condescension!]

Many schools take the official attitude that it's not their problem, said Tuchman. Rather, the schools react as if "it's the Jewish students who have the problem, and they need to learn how to deal with it."

Tuchman also cited a few examples of the anti-Semitism students face within the classroom. A Jewish student at Columbia University was told by her professor in a Middle Eastern Studies class that she had no claim to the land of Israel because she had green eyes and therefore could not be a Semite. Another professor, at UC Santa Cruz, left his health advocacy course to the charge of a guest lecturer one day. The guest lecturer presented slides purportedly showing Israeli soldiers brutalizing Palestinians. "How did this relate to the subject of the class?" asked Tuchman. "It didn't." In another classroom, a professor refused to answer any questions posed by a student who was a former IDF soldier until the student told the class how many Palestinians he had killed.

Tuchman explained that Title VI provides a legal recourse with which to battle campus anti-Semitism. Title VI requires that recipients of federal funding must ensure that their programs are free from harassment, intimidation and discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin, or risk losing that funding. Historically, anti-Semitism did not fall within Title VI because it was viewed to be discrimination based on religion, which was not protected by the Act.

In the fall of 2004, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) clarified how it would interpret the law, and said that because Jews shared a common ethnicity, they would be protected under Title VI. In October 2004, the ZOA filed a complaint with the OCR under Title VI on behalf of the Jewish students at UC Irvine. The complaint alleged that, despite the university's awareness that its campus environment was hostile to Jewish students, the administration had done nothing to remedy the problem. A few weeks later, the OCR agreed to investigate. Tuchman said that this was the first case of anti-Semitism to be investigated by the OCR. That investigation is still ongoing.

The good news, Tuchman said, is that the inclusion of Jews as a protected class under Title VI was recently endorsed by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a bi-partisan agency that investigates and studies discrimination, reporting its findings to Congress and the president. In 2006, the Commission recognized that anti-Semitism encompasses more than name calling and threats, and that sometimes it is expressed as "anti-Israelism" or anti-Zionism.

The Commission accordingly recommended that colleges and universities come out and condemn anti-Semitism, Tuchman explained. The Commission rejected the argument that universities could remain silent because of the perpetrators' right to free speech; instead, the Commission said, the schools had a moral obligation to take a stand against anti-Semitic speech.

The Commission's findings have sent "a powerful message to colleges and universities," Tuchman said. She advised college students experiencing anti-Semitism to file an appropriate complaint within the university system. If nothing productive comes from that, then they should pursue the legal remedies that are now available.

Source





Dumb and dumber -- and that's the teachers

Graduates from Richmond's Binford Middle School [Virginia] get a diplomalike certificate, signed by the teacher and principal. It is ringed by six graphic marks, including icons of a notebook, an apple, the school mascot and such. Then there is a picture of a man. And who is this icon of American education? Not John Dewey or Horace Mann, both of whom were called fathers of American education. It's not Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin or George Washington, either. Nor is it even James H. Binford, the first superintendent of Richmond Public Schools, for whom the school was named when it opened in 1915. This picture looks a little like Albert Einstein, perhaps. Or maybe Frederick Douglass. Or the Smith Brothers cough syrup guy. . . .

Wait a minute. . . . It's Karl Marx! Not exactly the father of education. This is the father of socialism. The father of communism. Author of "The Communist Manifesto." Any Google image search confirms it. The specific Marx image on the Binford certificate, artistically embellished with books in the background, can be found online.

There's nothing odd with teaching Karl Marx. Any well-rounded education ought to include his ideas. But Marx as the sole human symbol of Binford Middle School? In fact, if you were to rank anyone in the world who might appear on a graduation certificate in Richmond what number would Marx be? Would he even make the top million? Karl Marx would rank below Groucho Marx.

Binford Principal Juanita Nicholson said yesterday that she had not known the photo was of Marx or the reason for its use. She agreed it was an odd choice. Nicholson said one of the teachers on a committee apparently had done it. "I'm not sure . . . she even knew who it was."

Turns out she didn't. Richmond schools spokeswoman Felicia Cosby called last night to explain: "She really thought she was capturing clip art representing Frederick Douglass. She did a search to pull up Frederick Douglass and this is what came up . . . with the beard and the hair." Hold on. Wait a minute.

One was a German philosopher, the other an African-American slave who became a leading abolitionist. They can't be distinguished?

The teacher, the school and the school system "apologize profusely if this image offended parents and children alike," Cosby said. "But it was not intentional to put an image of Karl Marx up." It will be taken off in the future, she said. Fair enough. But in the future, let's make sure this committee isn't teaching history. [or anything else!]

Source




Dumb gets yet dumber in Britain

Britain's Leftist government will not be happy until British education is totally destroyed -- in aid of making everyone "equal" of course

Pupils taking GCSE [Middle school] exams will be asked multiple choice questions for the first time and be allowed to take unlimited resits. It has also emerged that, under a planned overhaul of the system, up to half of GCSE English marks would be awarded for basic skills such as punctuation. The planned reform of the exam system has fuelled accusations that testing standards are being lowered. Bethan Marshall, a senior lecturer in English education at King's College London, told the Times Educational Supplement: "If you make 50 per cent of the GCSE about doing the basics, you are dumbing down. "The subject is about so much more than being able to communicate accurately. And if you're still doing basic skills at GCSE level, Heaven help you. It's pretty boring."

Ministers said last night that the overhaul was an attempt to ensure all school-leavers gain basic numeracy and literacy skills. Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, denied reducing GCSE English to "primary school level" and insisted that the changes would ensure that pupils who passed were ready for the workplace. He added that students would still be required to have "deep and broad subject knowledge".

Under the revamped exam system, maths and information and communication technology students would potentially be awarded up to 50 per cent of the total marks for under standing the basics, known as "functional skills". One suggested question for an English test reportedly asks pupils which word is spelt incorrectly in the sentence: "Be careful, the kettel is hot."

Michael Gove, the Shadow Children's Minister, said: "The idea that 16-year-olds should be tested on how to spell "kettle" and the principle that this exam should be based on tick-box multiple choice tests undermine any claim to higher standards. "Ministers need to get a grip if these exams are to be genuinely testing." The Department for Children, Schools and Families said that no decision had been made on the 50 per cent figure, and emphasised that the reforms were subject to pilot tests.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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