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UK: University of Lincoln lecturer leaves job after controversial tweets
A lecturer whose tweets on the subject of terror attacks and feminism drew complaints from students has left his job at the University of Lincoln.
Michael Blackburn who worked in the English department at the university tweeted: "I know the media haven't told us but I suspect these terror attacks were carried out by Muslims because of Islam."
Another post added: "Thank God all those papers going on about patriarchy and the oppression of women are out of the way for another year."
The tweets sparked a number of complaints from students at the university. Now it has been confirmed that Mr Blackburn has left the university.
According to The Tab an Undergraduate Committee meeting it was suggested that he was taking 'early retirement'. Students also reported that they were given no information when he left and just told that their seminars were changing.
A University of Lincoln spokesperson refused to confirm or deny the tweets had led to his departure.
In a statment, the spokesman said: "We cannot comment on complaints made against individual members of staff. As a University we have a commitment to equality and diversity, and we treat each other with dignity and respect.
"Equally, we recognise individuals’ rights to hold different beliefs and views. We uphold the principle of free speech exercised responsibly within the law in all our activities; the right to think and speak freely and to explore ideas is fundamental to the idea of a university."
"Upholding academic freedom and respecting the views of others are joint commitments shared by all members of the university and we have a clear Code of Practice on the Freedom of Speech, which is designed to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured for all staff, students and visiting speakers."
After leaving Mr Blackburn then posted a blog on the Fortnightly Review website on his feelings on the situation.
It said: "It's unlikely that most of the students at our universities who are so keen to snitch on their classmates and lecturers for wrongthink, wrongspeak or wrongtweet have heard of the Stasi or the Securitate.
"That's a pity, because a brief acquaintance with those two institutions of modern totalitarianism may, just a smidgin, introduce a spark of self-awareness into their smug little minds."
It goes on later to say: "They'll batter away on their keyboards, hyperventilate on social media, send off emails to whoever is mummy and daddy in authority, demanding they stop the naughty man or woman from saying upsetting things.
"Then they'll go back to gossiping about who's having sex with whom and who threw up in the club at the weekend after too many Jagermeister bombs."
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Conservative activist attacked at UC Berkeley
A conservative activist reported he was attacked while recruiting students for Turning Point USA at UC Berkeley, according to campus police.
The University of California Police Department said in a statement that officers responded Tuesday afternoon to a "report of a disturbance" on upper Sproul Plaza, a center of student activity on campus, where they found the injured victim. An investigation is continuing, the university said Friday.
According to the police statement, the victim said that two men approached him, a verbal altercation ensued and he began recording the interaction on his phone.
One of the men "slapped the phone out of the victim's hand," police said. "The suspect then knocked over the table the victim was at and the two men struggled over the phone. During the incident, the suspect punched the victim several times causing injury to the victim's eye and nose."
Turning Point USA later identified the alleged victim to CNN as Hayden Williams, who had been invited to UC Berkeley to help recruit students for a yet-to-be-formed chapter on campus. A media representative for Williams said he is a field representative for the Leadership Institute, an organization that helps train conservative leaders. Williams is not a UC Berkeley student, the representative said.
"The fact that the victim was not a campus affiliate has no bearing on this case. He had every right to be on campus, and every right to express his point of view," said campus spokesman Dan Mogulof.
Friday, the campus police department said in a statement it had identified a suspect and the department's information indicated "the suspect is not a student at, or affiliate of the University." The department did not release his name.
Violence was 'disheartening,' student says
Williams told Fox News' Sean Hannity on Thursday that some students were upset by a sign he had displayed at his recruitment table that said, "Hate Crime Hoaxes Hurt Real Victims" -- apparently a reference to "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett, who has been accused of staging what he maintains was a hate crime against him.
"This person claimed we were promoting violence on campus and proceeded to take his aggression out on us," Williams told Hannity.
A short video recorded by a witness shows Williams and a man struggling before the man punches Williams in the face, knocking his hat off. The alleged suspect then gets close to Williams' face, calls him "racist," and shouts profanities before punching Williams again and walking away.
Williams told CNN he is fine but declined to answer other questions. He was treated at the scene, his media representative said.
Arda Erbil, the student who shot the footage provided to CNN, said he saw two men harassing Williams. As one of the men became physical, Erbil began to record video.
"Seeing something like that happen in such an open place was disheartening," he said.
UC Berkeley's chancellor and vice chancellor condemned the assault in a statement Thursday, calling it "reprehensible."
"That sort of behavior is intolerable and has no place here," the statement said. "Our commitment to freedom of expression and belief is unwavering."
The statement added that university officials have "no information indicating" the perpetrators are affiliated with UC Berkeley.
School has history of protests against conservatives
The incident illustrates the "hate and anger so many on the left harbor and that our student activists encounter on a daily basis," Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA's founder and president, said in a statement Thursday.
"Our amazing grassroots organizers courageously face threats of violence and discrimination as they fight for the right for conservative voices to be heard on college campuses," Kirk said, adding he was proud of how the group's student activists handled the situation.
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Australia: Publisher rejects Craig Kelly complaint school textbook 'inaccurate' on climate change
Only by uncritically accepting the usual Green/Left boilerplate
The publisher of a NSW year-10 history book has rejected complaints from the federal Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly that it misrepresents facts about climate change.
Kelly took issue with the characterisation of climate change in the textbook Pearson History New South Wales.
Kelly has written to the NSW education minister, Rob Stokes, saying the book’s description of Tony Abbott as a climate change denier was “an offensive slur equating it with Holocaust deniers”, the Daily Telegraph reported.
The book says: “Climate change is noticeable in Australia, with more extreme frequent weather events such as the 2002-06 drought or the 2010-11 Queensland floods.”
“That is simply an inaccurate statement that is in a school history book,” Kelly told parliament’s federation chamber last week.
“What chance do we have of forming the best policies in this nation to deal with fire, floods and drought if we have children being misled by incorrect information in our history books?”
January was Australia's hottest month since records began
Read more
He quoted Dorothea Mackellar’s poem My Country to argue contemporary natural disasters are nothing out of the ordinary: “I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains,” the poem says.
“We need to understand that we live in that same country that Dorothea Mackellar wrote about over a hundred years ago,” Kelly said.
“That is why we need to prepare and help people recover from their resources instead of wasting money pretending that we can change the weather.”
The Australian Bureau of Meterology says “one of the greatest impacts of climate variability and climate change occurs through changes in the frequency and severity of extreme events.”
It describes the 2011 Brisbane floods as the second-highest flood level of the last 100 years, after January 1974.
The bureau and CSIRO’s latest State of the Climate report said Australia was experiencing more extreme heat, longer fire seasons, rising oceans and more marine heatwaves, consistent with a changing climate.
A spokeswoman for the publisher Pearson backed the book.
“Pearson builds textbooks to support the Australian curriculum and we stand by this text book and its author,” she said.
Nonetheless, Stokes said he was writing to Pearson about Kelly’s concerns.
“It is very important that texts present information in a balanced way so that students can make up their own minds on important issues,” he said in a statement.
Stokes has previously criticised Abbott’s climate change stance, warning against “populist anti-intellectualism” from public figures.
The NSW school history curriculum does not specifically mention climate change and there is no mandatory textbook set.
While the state government sets the syllabus, it does not write or set the textbooks.
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