Monthly Archives: August 2017

July 31, 2017 | :

PASADENA, Calif. The unconventional convention Politicon brought together political wonks and fans from all over the country for a full weekend of panels, debates, art and entertainment. A debate sponsored by Turning Point USA, a non-profit organization that promotes conservative grassroots activism, sparked both praise and criticism of safe spaces on college campuses.

The wave of student protests over the past academic year as a result of conservative speakers being invited to college campuses served as an opening focal point for the debate. Among the incidents cited were administrators at De Paul University banning conservative speaker and author Ben Shapiro from entering the campus and Ann Coulter losing a speaking engagement at the University of California at Berkeley after officials informed her that they could not accommodate her due to threats of violence.

Turning Point USA Executive Director Charlie Kirk took on The Young Turks host Hasan Piker on the necessity of safe spaces and the idea that conservatism deserves a place in academia in a session moderated by the bipartisan Millennial Action Project founder Steven Olikara.

College campuses represent a microcosm of American society, Piker said. Definitions of safe spaces are not narrow and conservatives are claiming that liberals are looking for safe spaces yet believe they are victims because they are less popular. Free speech allows people to say what they want but it does not make people more popular.

Kirk, who said he had not attended college, agreed with Piker that conservative speakers such as Shapiro should be able to speak at campuses that will host them. It was pointed out, however, that when colleges promote intellectual diversity, higher education administrators still are responsible for serving the best interests and safety of students.

Boosting Black Enrollment Aim of Floridas First-Generation Grants

Should college administrators not listen to what the students want? asked Piker. Every speaker has the right to exercise their free speech rights. If there a divisive speaker that wants to come to a campus, administrators have to decide whether to put up money to protect an extremist speaker when students protest their appearance.

Piker indicated that he was at Rutgers University when freshman Tyler Clementi was cyber bullied for being gay by his dorm roommate and committed suicide in 2010. After that happened the Rainbow perspective housing dorms were created at Rutgers, said Piker. If you have been discriminated against your entire life and then enroll at a diverse college where people should tolerate you and then be bullied by your roommate for something you cannot change . . . A safe space would have saved his life.

Kirk rejected Pikers justification for safe spaces on college campus. There is a difference between a space where students can go receive mental health treatment and a space that is discriminatory and creates a culture that is inherently for students that are offended by something because they experience trigger words and microaggressions and complain they need a safe space.

The debate was packed with both conservative and liberal onlookers, particularly young people and college students. While carrying a hardbound copy of the U.S. Constitution, College of the Desert student Crystal Pasztor said that she wished the debate wasnt peppered with petty attacks on each other.

I came here to learn something. Although I learned a couple of things about what Kirk and Piker individually do, there was not enough about conservatives views or progressives views, she said. I love Hasan and watch The Young Turks but debates should not be about personal attacks. Debates like this should use official rules that have timed responses and rebuttals so people can take away more of the issues.

MSNBC contributor and Morgan State University School of Global Journalism and Communication professor Dr. Jason Johnson referred to Politicon as an explosion of political fandom.

As a first-time attendee, I wanted to see what happens when you have rival political parties in the same space, said Johnson, who also noted that students should be versed in politics when pursuing journalism. I do think that students should be more informed about politics [when they] are pursuing journalism and I found that they are not. It is not [an] HBCU issue, its a preparedness issue. What I bring back to the classroom to teach political communication is making sure students have some sense of humanity at the center of why you are pursuing this line of work.

Jamal Evan Mazyck, Ed.D. can be reached at j.e.mazyck@gmail.com or on Twitter @jmbeyond7

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Free Speech, Safe Spaces Hot Topics at Politicon - Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

Hypocrisy among the American political class is not all that unusual, but sometimes the naked expression of it takes on shocking proportions.

Proposed federal legislation known as the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, which attempts to criminalize the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign for Palestinian rights, is a perfect example.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recently issued a letter urging the 46 US senators -- 32 Republicans and 14 Democrats -- who have co-signed the Senate version of the bill, S. 720, to reconsider their support. A similar House measure has support from 185 Republicans and 64 Democrats.

According to the statement:

Under the bill, only a person whose lack of business ties to Israel is politically motivated would be subject to fines and imprisonment -- even though there are many others who engage in the very same behavior. In short, the bill would punish businesses and individuals based solely on their point of view. Such a penalty is in direct violation of the First Amendment...

By penalizing those who support international boycotts of Israel, S. 720 seeks only to punish the exercise of constitutional rights.

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If passed, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act would have chilling implications not only for supporters of Palestine, but also anyone who cares about the right to dissent in the Trump era. The bill not only exposes the hypocrisy of politicians who trumpet the right to free speech while they pass legislation to undermine it, but it also should serve as a cautionary tale for how the issue of "free speech" can be weaponized in ways that target dissenters while defending corporate power and apartheid states.

Apartheid Israel, for example, regularly violates the right to free speech, academic freedom, the right to a fair trial, indeed the very right to life of Palestinians living under its settler-colonial regime.

Thus, it's no surprise that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the fiercely pro-Israel lobbying group, helped draft the bill and considers its passage a top priority for 2017.

The bill seeks to amend two pieces of legislation -- the Export Administration Act of 1979 and the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945.

While these two laws currently criminalize compliance with the Arab League boycott of Israel, the newly proposed legislation seeks to expand their scope to include other "international boycotts of Israel," such as those that originate in the European Union or the United Nations, though the bill's main target is the BDS movement.

If passed, the felony charges associated with the previous bills would apply in relation to BDS, exposing "perpetrators" to a jaw-dropping minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.

While Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal according to the Fourth Geneva Convention, the proposed legislation does not differentiate between boycotts that target Israel as a whole from those that specifically target settlement production -- causing even J Street, a pro-Israel advocacy organization openly hostile to BDS, to come out against the bill.

As Dylan Williams of J Street wrote:

This bill could give Attorney General Jeff Sessions the power to prosecute any American who chooses not to buy settlement products for a felony offense. That kind of authority should not be given to any administration, let alone one that has engaged in extreme rhetoric against political opponents, including threats to 'lock [them] up.'

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It should be noted that this bill and others like it that attempt to criminalize BDS have nothing to do with stopping anti-Semitism.

As Ryan Grim, Washington bureau chief for The Intercept, said on Democracy Now! in response to Sen. Chuck Schumer's claim that BDS is "veiled anti-Semitism":

The irony here is that [this bill] doesn't criminalize all boycotts of Israel. So if you are a neo-Nazi group, and you are driven by explicit anti-Semitism, and you call for a boycott of Israel, you would not fall under this statute. Only if you're supporting BDS through the EU or through the UN from a pro-Palestinian perspective would the precise same action then be criminalized. And for the ACLU, that is the definition of a First Amendment violation, because the same act becomes criminalized only based on your political motivation for carrying out that act.

But besides the conflation of Zionism and anti-Semitism, this bill also exposes the hypocrisy of politicians and other mainstream institutions, such as college campuses and the mainstream media, which have recently championed the First Amendment when it comes to defending the right of racists to speak and mobilize, yet casually dismiss the right to free speech when it comes to advocacy on behalf of Palestinian rights.

For example, while there have been dozens of articles about the new "free speech wars" at the University of California-Berkeley after students protested right-wing speakers Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos, there has been only a faint whisper about the egregious free-speech violations embedded in the Israel Anti-Boycott Act.

The bill also exposes the hypocrisy of politicians who boast about their free-speech credentials, yet turn a blind eye to the denial of free speech to pro-Palestine activists.

As Josh Israel noted at Think Progress, just three years ago, in considering an amendment that would have overturned Citizens United, several senators who are co-sponsors of the anti-BDS bill objected strongly on the basis of the free speech rights -- of corporations.

"Could we really have entered a world so extreme that our common ground no longer even includes the First Amendment of the Constitution?" said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in a floor speech at that time.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) also waxed eloquently about how the cause of democracy is served by enshrining the right of corporations to buy and sell politicians like so many talking billboards:

In our system of government, all voices have the right to be heard. The First Amendment gives them that right... We have a system that allows all voices to be heard, even those that oppose the majority. That is not antithetical to democracy; it is the essence of democracy. So it is time, it seems to me, to stop pretending that allowing more voices to be heard somehow poses a danger just because we don't like what they are saying.

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Both Cruz and Roberts have co-signed the anti-BDS bill, illustrating how these politicians will use the First Amendment to stand up for corporate rights to buy elections, but when it comes to Israel they are all too happy to sign off on legislation that could imprison activists in the US for decades simply due to their political beliefs.

Perhaps more counterintuitive is the support of liberal Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) for the anti-BDS bill.

Wyden is known for speaking out against the National Security Agency for violating American citizens' right to not be spied on as well as being a staunch proponent of net neutrality.

Furthermore, in late May, Wyden stood up for the right of neo-Nazis to hold a demonstration in Portland, Oregon, back in June when he opposed Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler's problematic plea to the federal government to revoke their permit.

"The First Amendment cuts both ways, that's why it's so special," Wyden told the media. "The challenge is going to be for the officials in our community to find ways to deal with [the growth and confidence of the right] that don't, in effect, set aside the Constitution."

Yet Wyden is one of many Democratic backers of the anti-BDS bill, illustrating the all-too-familiar bipartisan "Palestine exception" when it comes to free speech for pro-Palestine activists.

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In addition to speaking out and organizing against the passage of the anti-BDS bill, we should take its proposal as a stark reminder of the potential danger posed by liberals and progressives who call on the state or university administrators to ban hate speech or far-right mobilizations.

Such calls to ban right-wing speech do more to embolden the right by allowing them to play the victim than it does to weaken their forces.

Furthermore, because the definition of what constitutes "hate speech" is made by politicians, such calls end up legitimating their power when their use of such bans invariably end up getting aimed at left-wing dissenters who pose a much greater threat to their interests than right-wing ones.

Take Steven Salaita, the professor who lost his job at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for his vocal support for Palestine during Israel's 2014 bombing of Gaza.

Salaita recently announced he is leaving academia because, despite having done nothing illegal and despite being a respected academic, pro-Israel forces have undermined his ability to secure a teaching job on four continents. Salaita is only one of several scholars targeted for speaking out against racism, sexism and imperialism since Trump's election.

Back at UC Berkeley just last fall, the administration suspended a student-led class on Palestine titled "Palestine: A Settler-Colonial Analysis" due to its political content.

These are just the tip of the iceberg of a fierce campaign to silence the speech of students, professors and activists who speak out about Palestine and challenge Israel's human rights abuses.

Our side must not only continue to stand up for Palestine, but also continue to defend free speech at every turn. That right is not only one we have historically fought for and defended, but one we will need at every step in the fight for our freedom, which itself will be linked to freedom and justice for Palestine.

John Monroe and Mukund Rathi contributed to this article.

Original post:
This Anti-BDS Bill Is an Assault on Free Speech - Truth-Out

Reviews and News:

Why have university administrators allied themselves with progressive campus activists? They have found common ground in the safe space of intellectual mediocrity through consumer sensitivity. This alliance is unlikely to collapse any time soon. Administrators and campus activists have much to gain from supporting one another. And both can rely on a phalanx of Title IX regulations by the Department of Education to stifle any faculty or student dissent that might arise. Critics can easily find themselves charged with some trumped-up Title IX violation certain to upend their lives for months.

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How a French juggler and unicyclist helped create the Information Age: The great Russian mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov put it like this in 1963: In our age, when human knowledge is becoming more and more specialized, Claude Shannon is an exceptional example of a scientist who combines deep abstract mathematical thought with a broad and at the same time very concrete understanding of vital problems of technology.

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Ian Tuttle reviews Theodore Dalrymples The Proper Procedure and Other Stories: The volume is filled with lousy neighbors. They play music loud and all night; they deal drugs; they urinate in the stairwells. The women seduce the men, and the men beat the women. The police visit occasionally but are loath to insinuate themselves. Everyone is, as the unhappy Miss Falkenhagen says, a predatory beast.

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The Rand Corporations art: It's not as though the hallways of the Rand building, located a couple of blocks from the beach on Main Street, are teeming with boisterous researchers and pontificating analysts gesturing at various artworks. The corridors are frequently quiet; conversations are conducted in indoor voices. But some of those conversations are about or inspired by the art they encounter every day in the 310,000-square-foot building.

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A new theory of ball lightning: Ball lightning comes in most colors of the rainbow and ranges in sizefrom a typical toy marble, to those extra large exercise balls some people sit on instead of office chairs. It can form inside closed spaces and move down chimneys and horizontally through closed windows. In addition to producing light, ball lightning can give off sparks and is associated with hissing or buzzing noises and a strong, irritating odor. It typically lasts for only seconds, glowing with the intensity of a bright household light bulb. The unpredictable and variable nature of ball lightning has made it difficult to develop a conclusive theory explaining how it works, but accounts of its strangeness are numerous and have been published for centuries.

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Essay of the Day:

Why is free speech suppressed on university campuses? In Modern Age, Roger Scruton argues it is fear: Why protect a belief that stands on its own two feet?

In universities today...studentsand certainly the most politically active among themtend to resist the idea of exclusive groups. They are particularly insistent that distinctions associated with their inherited culturebetween sexes, classes, and races; between genders and orientations; between religions and lifestylesshould be rejected, in the interests of an all-comprehending equality that leaves each person to be who she really is. A great negation sign has been placed in front of all the old distinctions, and an ethos of non-discrimination adopted in their stead. And yet this seeming open-mindedness inspires its proponents to silence those who offend against it. Certain opinionsnamely, those that make the forbidden distinctionsbecome heretical. By a move that Michael Polanyi described as moral inversion, an old form of moral censure is renewed, by turning it against its erstwhile proponents. Thus, when a visiting speaker is diagnosed as someone who makes invidious distinctions, he or she is very likely to be subjected to intimidation for being a supporter of old forms of intimidation.

There may be no knowing in advance how the new heresies might be committed, or what exactly they are, since the ethic of nondiscrimination is constantly evolving to undo distinctions that were only yesterday part of the fabric of reality. When Germaine Greer made the passing remark that, in her opinion, women who regarded themselves as men were not, in the absence of a penis, actually members of the male sex, the remark was judged to be so offensive that a campaign was mounted to prevent her speaking at the University of Cardiff. The campaign was not successful, partly because Germaine Greer is the person she is. But the fact that she had committed a heresy was unknown to her at the time, and probably only dawned on her accusers in the course of practicing that mornings Two Minutes Hate.

More successful was the campaign in Britain to punish Sir Tim Hunt, the Nobel Prizewinning biologist, for making a tactless remark about the difference between men and women in the laboratory. A media-wide witch hunt began, leading Sir Tim to resign from his professorship at University College London; the Royal Society (of which he is a fellow) went public with a denunciation, and he was pushed aside by the scientific community. A lifetime of distinguished creative work ended in ruin. That is not censorship, so much as the collective punishment of heresy, and we should try to understand it in those terms.

The ethic of nondiscrimination tells us that we must not make any distinctions between the sexes and that women are as adapted to a scientific career as men are. That view is unquestionable in any territory claimed by the radical feminists. I dont know whether it is true, but I doubt that it is, and Sir Tims tactless remark suggested that he does not believe it either. How would I find out who is right? Surely, by considering the arguments, by weighing the competing opinions in the balance of reasoned discussion, and by encouraging the free expression of heretical views. Truth arises by an invisible hand from our many errors, and both error and truth must be permitted if the process is to work. Heresy arises, however, when someone questions a belief that must not be questioned from within a groups favored territory. The favored territory of radical feminism is the academic world, the place where careers can be made and alliances formed through the attack on male privilege. A dissident within the academic community must therefore be exposed, like Sir Tim, to public intimidation and abuse, and in the age of the Internet this punishment can be amplified without cost to those who inflict it. This process of intimidation casts doubt, in the minds of reasonable people, on the doctrine that inspires it. Why protect a belief that stands on its own two feet? The intellectual frailty of the feminist orthodoxy is there for all to see in the fate of Sir Tim.

Read the rest.

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Photos: Earliest crossing of the Northwest Passage

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Poem: Heinrich Heine, The Devil Take Your Mother

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Prufrock: Free Speech on Campus, Why Academics Love Jargon, and Ball Lightning - The Weekly Standard