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Leftist Protester At American University Goes Completely Bonkers Over Dinesh D’Souza Lecture
Leftists seem to think they are more persuasive if they shout
A leftist protester at American University was filmed screaming at a conservative who was hosting conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza on campus.
A leftist protester was caught on film screaming at a conservative student activist this week. The meltdown came in response to a scheduled lecture from conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza at American University in Washington D.C.
“Because motherfuckers like you come here and you have no idea what it’s like to be gay, to be a person of color, to know what it’s like to live with institutional racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia,” he said, to an inaudible response from the student.
The protester then blamed conservative speech for mass shootings around the country. “I don’t believe people should be promoting hate speech that leads to mass shootings by angry, white, Brock Turner motherfuckers like you,” he shouts.
“If I were your father, I’d kill myself,” the protester said before the video cuts off.
In the lecture, D’Souza addressed the protester, specifically the portion where the protester argued that the student had no idea what it is like to be a person of color. “I just saw, on social media, a video of a protester screaming about my presence here tonight, a white guy. And he goes, ‘You don’t know what it means to be a person of color.’ And I thought, well if there is one thing I do know, it’s that.”
SOURCE Video at link
UCLA diversity requirement threatens academic freedom, trust in academia
A recent article in Real Clear Investigations reported on a decision by the University of California, Los Angeles to require all professors applying for a tenure-track position — as well as any seeking promotion — to submit an “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion” statement as part of their portfolio.
Guidance from UCLA’s Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion is intended to explain what this requirement means and why UCLA determined that these statements must accompany the evidence of teaching, research, and service that traditionally go into such decisions at every university in America. Unfortunately, the guidance is cause for alarm, and has the potential to seriously threaten academic freedom at UCLA.
UCLA’s FAQ-formatted guidance begins with the question, “Should equity, diversity, and inclusion figure into faculty hiring and promotion?” Its answer, of course, is yes, and it cites the university’s Academic Personnel Manual, Section 210-1-d, which states that “[c]ontributions in all areas of faculty achievement that promote equal opportunity and diversity should be given due recognition in the academic personnel process, and they should be evaluated and credited in the same way as other faculty achievements.”
Indeed, the guidance cites this language throughout as justification for the newly mandatory statements. Yet the language cited dates back at least to 2015, and substantially similar statements about how candidates’ work in this area should count for hiring and promotion date as far back as 2005. These statements weren’t mandatory then, so why are they now? Even today, the manual itself does not actually specify that candidates must have done work to promote “equity, diversity, and inclusion” — it merely says that if candidates have done that work, it must be counted in their favor.
One needn’t be a rocket scientist to see the distinct difference between counting “equity, diversity, and inclusion” work in a candidate’s favor and mandating all candidates to provide evidence of this work with their application. It’s one thing to tell candidates that their work in the areas of equity, diversity, and inclusion will be credited to them and make sure these do not go unrecognized by departments. It’s entirely another to indicate to candidates that their mandatory EDI statement is going to be awfully lacking if they happen to spend too much time pursuing teaching, research, and service goals that may be both worthy and excellent, but which simply don’t move the needle in the direction of equity, diversity, or inclusion. Or to set up a process where faculty interviewers can’t help but hold this against them.
Speaking of which, what does UCLA mean by equity, diversity, and inclusion? For those who might suspect that these terms are politically loaded, UCLA offers little if any evidence to the contrary. While the definitions provided are not themselves explicitly partisan, one searches in vain for an example of work toward these goals that includes activity with which people on the left side of the political spectrum would be uncomfortable, either in the guidance itself, in a document from the Office of the President to which it refers, or in the example EDI statements supplied to give candidates an idea of what the university is seeking. If you doubt this is likely to be used an an ideological screening tool, imagine UCLA replacing “equity, diversity, and inclusion” with “capitalism, freedom, and patriotism,” and providing examples that happen not to include any activities or opinions that would make mainstream Republicans uncomfortable, and see if your opinion changes. Such an idea is hardly far-fetched, and of course such tests are wrong no matter whose ideology happens to be in the ascendant.
Anticipating objections on ideological grounds, the guidance explicitly professes to tackle the questions of whether this new requirement violates California’s Proposition 209 banning certain kinds of discrimination or preferential statement by state entities (it says it doesn’t), and whether it will violate academic freedom (it says it won’t, and adds that political tests in hiring or promotion are banned in UC Regents bylaws). Given the nature of such disputes and our current political culture, of course, these assurances are unlikely to do much to convince those wary of the new requirement that their fears are baseless, and it’s reasonable to expect that most of the controversy over the requirement will fall along the predictable political lines.
Even those without much interest in current culture-war disputes have reason to be concerned about the effect of this requirement on academic freedom. In its 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure, the American Association of University Professors wrote the following:
[I]t is highly needful, in the interest of society at large, that what purport to be the conclusions of men trained for, and dedicated to, the quest for truth, shall in fact be the conclusions of such men, and not echoes of the opinions of the lay public, or of the individuals who endow or manage universities. To the degree that professional scholars, in the formation and promulgation of their opinions, are, or by the character of their tenure appear to be, subject to any motive other than their own scientific conscience and a desire for the respect of their fellow experts, to that degree the university teaching profession is corrupted; its proper influence upon public opinion is diminished and vitiated; and society at large fails to get from its scholars, in an unadulterated form, the peculiar and necessary service which it is the office of the professional scholar to furnish.
UCLA’s diversity statement requirement contradicts this principle.
First, take a look at who is demanding that faculty members, both current and prospective, dedicate a substantial part of their efforts to activities that look good on an EDI statement. It’s not the faculty members themselves. It’s not even the faculty at large. No, it’s the UCLA administration and the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion — in other words, “the individuals who [] manage universities.”
Second, even by 1915 it was obvious to the professoriate that the credibility of their work, which is based on their reputation for expertise in their fields, would be fatally compromised if people could merely dismiss their purportedly academic conclusions by pointing out that ideology, or the fear of losing jobs or opportunities because of political disagreement, was what was driving their academic endeavors. Yet that is precisely what UCLA has now mandated must happen. If faculty members want to have a satisfactory EDI statement, they’d better turn some of their academic endeavors toward “equity, diversity, and inclusion,” however UCLA administrators define such terms, regardless of their own “scientific conscience” and/or “desire for the respect of their fellow experts.”
Last year, the Pew Research Center released a poll indicating that the percentage of Republican-leaning respondents who thought that colleges and universities had a positive effect on the way things are going in the country had dropped to 36 percent in 2017, with 58 percent saying they had a negative effect. This was a dramatic drop from just two years before, in which 54 percent said colleges had a positive effect and only 37 percent said it was negative. (The overwhelmingly positive sentiment of Democrat-leaning respondents remained virtually unchanged.)
Whatever your political sentiments, colleges and universities will most certainly suffer if they can no longer claim a broad, cross-partisan base of support. Avoiding policies that are both politically divisive and destructive to academic freedom is a necessary condition if we are to rebuild everyone’s confidence that higher education is a net positive for our country, and worthy of the billions of tuition, taxpayer, and philanthropic dollars it receives every year. By allowing administrators to rely on broad, subjective, and ideologically-loaded terms to influence hiring decisions, UCLA is headed in the opposite direction.
SOURCE
My Macquarie University talk shows why universities can't win
Bettina Arndt, writing from Australia
Well, I have just completed the final talk in my Fake Rape Campus tour for this year– at Macquarie University in Sydney. Macquarie is a pretty snoozy place, a far less political campus than Sydney university and it is currently exam time so the event was much quieter than previous ones. It went pretty well, with about 60 people showing up and no protesters.
For the previous few weeks feminists had been very actively pull down posters promoting the event but the Liberal Club students hosting my talk did a great job getting more posters out there. That’s the main point of the whole exercise – not simply persuading people to show up for the event but getting the message out to ordinary students the universities are misleading them about the safety of their campuses – and demonising young men in the process.
The student newspaper put the usual feminist spin on what I am doing, claiming the Human Rights Commission figures understate the problem because rape victims won’t come forward. That’s an argument that surely doesn’t hold up when it comes to a totally confidential, anonymous survey. But at Macquarie the activists had the bright idea of holding an event supporting rape survivors at the same time as my talk – and a far more peaceful time was had by all.
I’m posting just a small segment of the Q&A, where I was questioned by a rape victim. It’s only a few minutes long but I think you will find it illuminating.
We are not allowing comments to be posted about this video because I don’t want my questionner to receive personal attacks. However I thought this was a very interesting exchange, illustrating very clearly that the whole campus rape narrative is being driven by people, some with very sad histories, who have no interest in evidence or facts but are determined to promote their ideological position that our campuses are crawling with rapists. They are now actively seeking to drum up new data which supports their position, conveniently dismissing the Human Rights’ Commission survey which failed to produce evidence of a rape crisis. It shows so clearly that despite the strenuous efforts of our universities to appease these people, there is no way they are ever going to be satisfied.
It is quite frightening that the whole higher education sector appears to believe they can enhance their public reputation by kowtowing to this dangerous minority group – selling out young men in the process. It makes me all the more determined to push ahead with my campus tour next year. I now have student groups across the country keen on hosting more talks – which will roll out from the start of first semester next year. We are looking at ways of circulating proper information about the campus rape issue, organising meetings with university administrators, talking to staff and alumni groups as well as students.
Senator Amanda Stoker
Then there’s action following Senator Amanda Stoker’s excellent efforts to raise questions about the violent Sydney University protest in Senate Estimates. We’ve organised for TEQSA, the body responsible for monitoring universities’ compliance with regulations, to be given all the evidence for Sydney University’s failure to protect student safety and control unruly students. It will be nice to see this arrogant institution facing some tough questions and we have other plans if the current approach fails to achieve any results.
Gunning for me
Some of you may remember a video interview I posted last year with Nico Bester, a teacher who served time in prison for having a sexual relationship with one of his older students. He rightly paid the price for doing something very wrong. I interviewed him because I object to the fact that having served prison time for his offence he has now become the poster boy for the #MeToo activists who are conducting a ferocious campaign to try to stop him finishing his PhD at Tasmania University.
This week the activists have launched the latest stage in their campaign, arguing in numerous newspaper articles that his victim should be allowed to “fight back,” by openly telling her story. At present Tasmanian laws prohibit the media from naming her. The irony is we recently removed Bester’s video after discovering the material we presented included a tiny image of her face, taken from her Facebook page, which apparently was most distressing for the victim.
It seems rather odd that she is now demanding Tasmania changes its laws so her identity can be publicly revealed. Sixty Minutes is currently promoting a teaser for this week’s programme which includes a highly selective segment from my video interview with Bester. Rest assured they’ll be doing their best to discredit me in every way possible. My campus tour is making me a very big target!
Via email
thus Article
that is all articles
This time, hopefully can provide benefits to all of you. Okay, see you in another article posting.
You now read the article with the link address https://onechildsmart.blogspot.com/2018/11/leftist-protester-at-american.html
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