Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan

From the Chicago Tribune, a comparison between the late president, revered among conservatives, and the current Republican front runner.

Today, the polarizing contender is Donald Trump, and it’s safe to guess that many of the voters who like him also liked Reagan. He has built his campaign, in fact, on his appeal to “Reagan Democrats” — socially conservative working-class voters, particularly white men. “Let’s make America great again” was Reagan’s 1980 slogan. Hmm.

The parallel may sound absurd to those who remember the Gipper as a smiling, avuncular statesman whose speeches could touch the heart. When he was running against President Jimmy Carter, though, critics perceived Reagan as a reckless ignoramus with a simple-minded view of the world and a knack for exploiting racial resentments.

But then the analogy breaks down:

But the resemblance is deceptive. The differences between the Reagan of 1980 and the Trump of 2016 are bigger and deeper than the similarities.

Reagan was a consistent conservative with a clear vision of what he thought the federal government should do, drawing on a body of political and economic thought and first-rate advisers. Trump is not consistently conservative or consistently anything else. He appears to listen to few advisers of any caliber.

The 40th president also had experience in office, having served for eight years as governor of California, where he showed he could balance ideology with practical and political necessity. Trump has no comparable experience, and he has shown no such ability.

The two also diverge on some major issues. Trump regards undocumented workers as a dangerous plague, while Reagan signed the 1986 amnesty that let millions of foreigners gain legal status and citizenship. The protectionist Trump deplores NAFTA — which was the brainchild of Reagan.

Less tangible differences are equally revealing. Trump traffics in dark fears about Mexicans and Muslims, brags nonstop about himself and bombards rivals with insults. Reagan was a courtly man who often made jokes at his own expense. He didn’t take disagreement personally, and Hoover Institution fellow Bill Whalen notes, “Reagan wrote the Eleventh Commandment: ‘Thou shall not speak ill of any fellow Republican.’ Trump has broken the entire tablet.”

Reagan was able to inspire and unite Americans as few presidents have because of his generous spirit, his likable personality and his devotion to the idea of America as a “shining city on a hill.” Trump invokes big goals, but often in ways that diminish our highest ideals.

Reagan served a cause bigger than himself. Trump gives the impression that in his mind, there is nothing bigger than himself.

Republicans mulling whether to fall in line behind Trump ought to ask: Would I be advancing the ideals that Ronald Reagan advocated? Or would I be undercutting the legacy of someone I admired?

Indeed, the white working class has every good reason to vote against liberal Democrats. Liberal Democrats, after all, are the people who would discriminate against them in employment, and discriminate against their children in college admissions. Liberal Democrats sneer that their conservative social values, and don’t even bother to conceal their contempt.

But there are better and worse ways to express a legitimate grievance. Right now, the better way is to vote for Ted Cruz, which is actually a vote for an open convention. We don’t see any Ronald Reagan among Republican candidates right now, but we see lot of people better than Donald Trump.

Anti-Trump Fascists Riot, Harass and Vandalize Rally Goers

Got it Backwards

GLENN MCCOY © Belleville News-Democrat. Dist. By UNIVERSAL UCLICK. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Still More Coverage of Marquette Attempt to Fire Warrior Blogger

First, from the John William Pope Center, “At Marquette, Honesty, Free Speech, and Tenure No Match for Political Correctness.” Read the whole thing, but one key quote is:

One lesson we learn from this dispute is that faculty contracts and tenure are no shield against vengeful leftist academics. The Marquette administration should have immediately realized that McAdams was perfectly within his rights and told those who were calling for his head to go to their keyboards and argue with him. Instead, it chose to lead the mob.

Another lesson is that academic freedom is on thin ice, at least at some of our institutions. It’s particularly thin under the feet of students and faculty members who dare to contest politically correct ideas. If any Marquette professor had criticized McAdams for his views or the way he treated a student, there would have been no repercussions: no administrative rebuke, no banishment, no suspension, no threatened termination.

In fact, we have been attacked by leftist faculty, and of course that was fine with Marquette.

But free speech on campus has become like the equality of animals in Orwell’s Animal Farm. All animals were supposedly equal, but, once the revolution took over, some were more equal than others. Similarly at Marquette, faculty members are supposed to have academic freedom, but some are more free than others.

Then we have the Weekly Standard. Among many excellent observations we have these:

One might expect [Abbate’s] sort of bullying from, say, a certain Mizzou ex-faculty member. But Marquette is ostensibly a Jesuit institution. Are views held by, for example, the pope out of bounds at a Catholic college? Because for all Pope Francis’s moves toward a less judgmental tone on social issues, he has not reversed the church’s position on same-sex marriage. Speaking last year in the Philippines, the pope said the family is “threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage.” He warned that society was “tempted by confusing presentations of sexuality, marriage and the family.”

What could be more confusing than an ethics class at a Catholic university in which discussion of a church doctrine—defense of traditional marriage—is verboten?

And then:

Once upon a time, universities were animated by the classical liberal belief that learning and knowledge, let alone liberty, are best served by robust debate. As John Stuart Mill wrote, it “is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.” Dogma is the alternative.

Marquette, its administrators, and faculty would be wise to recall how this inquisition started: An instructor told a student that a legitimate debate could not be held because it would cause offense. The college seems determined to compound the original error by punishing the professor who had the courage to call attention to this betrayal of intellectual freedom.

“The Hunting Ground:” Agitprop in the Service of a Moral Panic

How We Got Affirmative Action

Originally published in 1998, we just found an essay by one Hugh Murray about how “affirmative action” (a euphemism for discrimination against white males, as well as against other successful groups like Asians and Jews) came about. Murray first explains that, when it was passed, the 1964 Civil Rights Act not only did not require affirmative action, it actually outlawed it.

Conservatives Roberts and Stratton and remind us that the debate about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the debate over quotas; it would never have been enacted without a series of amendments to ensure that quotas would not result. Democrat Emmanuel Celler amended the proposal so that the EEOC could make no substantial interpretations of regulations. Sen. Everett Dirksen amended it so that discrimination must be “intentional” and seniority systems protected. Sen. John Tower amended it to protect continued use of aptitude tests in which whites invariably scored higher than blacks. All the supporters of the bill assured the nation that there would be no quotas—and Roberts and Stratton quote Senators Hubert Humphrey, Clifford Case, Thomas Kuchel, Harrison Williams, and even the Leadership Committee on Civil Rights to that effect.

Murray goes through the transformation of a law requiring equal treatment into a law used to promote discrimination, and discusses what might seem to be a paradox: conservative and Republican-voting business executives have supported affirmative action. Murray explains:

Why? “While AA may be one of the costs of doing business for the big fellows— ... it is no threat to their existence and can even be viewed as raising the entry barrier to potential competitors, the little guys.” To put it bluntly, IBM and Proctor and Gamble can afford to hire dummies, druggies, and violent criminals. Smaller companies cannot. Meanwhile, the large corporations gain an image of compassion and fairness. Better qualified whites who are not promoted or hired are poor or working class whites. But with AA, those poor whites are labeled “privileged,” and therefore deserving of being denied employment or promotion. Meanwhile, the wealthy, privileged, CEO’s receive humanitarian awards. Clearly what is most needed is a class analysis of the monstrosity called affirmative action

The rhetoric about “dummies, druggies, and violent criminals” might seem overwrought, but in fact any qualification that produces “disparate outcomes” for blacks versus whites is considered suspect. Failing to hire because of criminal convictions, poor aptitude test scores, and drug use are quite explicitly named among those things.

Liberal Protection Racket

What business is subjected to is, quite simply, a protection racket. Just as, early in the 20th century in many American cities, it was rational for any business to pay “protection” to the mafia, today it is rational to have and advertise initiatives for “diversity” and “inclusion” and “sustainability.”

If you talk loudly enough about such things, and fund some liberal interest groups, and hire some bureaucrats promoting those things, you will be allowed to go ahead and do what you need to do — produce a good or service that people value and sell it for a profit.

To acquiesce in this system is a rational choice for any executive. The the collective effect is to screw over a lot of innocent victims.  But they are the poor and working class whites that the affluent liberals view as the “other” and demean and deride.

Yes, A Wall Sounds Good

Marquette’s Feckless Response When Confronted By Concerned Alum

Marquette’s attempt to fire this blogger has gone over quite poorly with a fair number of alumni, and some (we don’t know how many, but have gotten copies of several communications) have written to express their disgust. And often, to tell the University not to ask for money again.

One such alumnus shared the letter (it is obviously a form letter) he got in return.

President Lovell has asked me to reply on his behalf to your recent letter regarding Professor McAdams. While we have complied with your request to remove your name from our mailing lists, I would like to provide a fuller accounting than what has been disseminated in media reports. First, please know that your alma mater has not abandoned its Catholic principles and in fact has been guided by them during this challenging situation.

The principle at stake here has always been behavior, not free speech. The topic of marriage may have initiated the situation but it had nothing to do with subsequent events or the substance of what happened to our student. I have enclosed a recent paper that clarifies Marquette’s position, as well as Dr. Lovell’s “A Call for Decency” message. Online at http://today.marquette.edu/2016/04/faq/, you will find additional facts and endorsements and a link to an article from U.S. Catholic, one of the country’s most respected Catholic magazines. I think you will find this article compelling as it lays out facts and a viewpoint that have not been carried by most media outlets reporting on this story.

Let me reinforce, [redacted], that our Catholic, Jesuit identity is at the heart of all we do, our students are our central concern, and our guiding values and mission will not be compromised by political correctness. Marquette’s position is that without respect and decency, we cannot have robust discourse and intellectual inquiry — in short, we cannot be a great university. I hope you get a sense of this in the enclosed articles. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any additional concerns.

Sincerely,

Michael VanDerhoef, Jour ‘84
Vice President, University Advancement

The dishonesty here would be comical, did this letter not come from a once-decent university that was really Catholic and really provided a Jesuit education.

Let’s take it piece at a time (Marquette’s statements in sans-serif type):

The principle at stake here has always been behavior, not free speech.

But our “behavior” was a blog post. If a blog post isn’t speech, what is it? If speech that Marquette doesn’t like somehow becomes “behavior,” then academic freedom means nothing.

Dr. Lovell’s “A Call for Decency” message

Somehow “decency” did not involve decent treatment of an undergraduate who was demeaned and bullied by a graduate Philosophy instructor. The student was greeted with hostility by Marquette officials when he complained of his treatment, and the instructor (Cheryl Abbate) was supported in her intolerant attitudes.

Why the hostility? Quite simply, Marquette officials apparently agreed with Abbate that opposition to gay marriage should not be allowed to be expressed at Marquette.

a link to an article from U.S. Catholic, one of the country’s most respected Catholic magazines

The liberal U.S. Catholic is in fact the only Catholic publication that has supported Marquette in this. As noted by the Louis Joliet Society:

A hastily assembled blog post on the website of a magazine called “U.S. Catholic” is not likely to persuade skeptics that there is anything “Catholic” in Marquette’s decision- making in this case, particularly given the reams of analysis and commentary to the contrary, much of it from weighty Catholic/Christian publications as well. (For starters, see here, here, here, here, here and here.)

And then:

our guiding values and mission will not be compromised by political correctness

Again, the Louis Joliet Society has a list of the things that Marquette has done that can only be characterized as politically correct. Among those they list:

• Gay and Lesbian Mass.
• Planned Parenthood advertising free STD tests in the Alumni Memorial Union.
• Bras, underwear, tampons, feminine pads, birth control pills, condoms and a vibrator on display in Marquette’s Alumni Memorial Union to promote the University’s eighth production of “The Vagina Monologues.”
• A Gender Regime increasingly hostile to Catholic teaching.
• Establishment of a full blown Marquette LGBTQ Center.
• Hosting a transgender conference on campus.
• Dishonesty regarding Marquette’s Transgender bathrooms.
• Special reception for LGBT alumni.
• Scholarships limited to gay and lesbian students.
• Handing out birth control to students.
• Replacing pro-life awareness activities with LGBTQ activities over the course of October, “Respect for Life Month.”
• Hypocrisy in honoring/rescinding honorary degrees.
• Recruiting staff for LGBTQ Resource Center in Gay and Lesbian magazine.
• Endorsing the notion that those who oppose gay “marriage” should be silenced.

While most of the political correctness on campus seems to revolve around sex and gender issues, we have things such as a mural honoring one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Terrorists. Since she is a black woman, apparently it doesn’t matter too much that she’s a murderer. Then we have Marquette’s support for an extreme anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian position.

Marquette’s position is that without respect and decency, we cannot have robust discourse and intellectual inquiry — in short, we cannot be a great university.

Apparently, we can be a great university without freedom of expression. At least, when that free expression discomforts the administration and intolerant leftist members of the faculty.

But of course, nothing about our blog post was uncivil — that is unless any criticism of the politically correct intolerant left is automatically uncivil.

That, however, seems to be what the Marquette administration believes.

New Face on the Currency

Marquette’s Hypocritical Claim to Care For Students

From Rick Esenberg, on Right Wisconsin:

Cura Personalis is a Latin phrase that translates as “Care for the Whole Person.” Marquette uses the term to claim that it will support each student based on their unique talents, challenges, needs and possibilities. But does Marquette practice what it preaches?

This question brings us to the controversy surrounding Marquette’s suspension and termination of Professor John McAdams. Little attention has been paid to the heart of the story: a complaint by a Marquette undergraduate about his Marquette Instructor. How did cura personalis apply to this student?

The student came to Professor McAdams with a complaint about the way he was treated by his philosophy instructor and the way his complaint was handled by Marquette administrators. His instructor, Cheryl Abbate, made it clear to him that expressing opposition to gay marriage was not just mistaken but “homophobic” and “offensive.” As such his views would not be tolerated. There is no dispute about this. The exchange was recorded. The Instructor informed her student that his traditional Catholic beliefs were beyond the pale.

Although the University refers to Ms. Abbate as a “student,” she was a paid employee of the University responsible for delivering a required philosophy course and grading the students who took it. In fact, she invoked her authority as a “professor of ethics” when talking to this student. Her treatment of her student was anything but an exercise of cura personalis.

The student complained to Dr. Susanne Foster in the College of Arts & Sciences, and was sent to the Philosophy Department where he spoke with then-chair Dr. Nancy Snow and Dr. Sebastian Luft. Neither Dr. Snow nor Dr. Luft took any action on behalf of the student. In fact, Dr. Snow referred to him as an “insolent little twerp” in a communication with the College of Arts & Sciences. What Dr. Snow did do was communicate immediately with Ms. Abbate to tell her, in essence, that they had her back. Dr. Snow reported to Ms. Abbate that she told the student that he “needed to change his attitude” and that she would be “monitoring” the situation. Dr. Snow told Ms. Abbate to let her know if the student did anything that Ms. Abbate found objectionable. Ms. Abbate thanked Dr. Snow and said that hopefully the student learned that “oppressive discourse is not acceptable.”

So what we have thus far is the administration at the university calling an undergraduate student names behind his back and circling the wagons against the undergraduate.

But it gets worse. The student returned to Arts and Sciences and spoke to Associate Dean James South. Dr. South recorded the interview without the student’s knowledge or consent. The recording shows that Dr. South lied to the student, telling him he had not listened to the student’s recording of the conversation with Ms. Abbate even though he had. Subsequently, in explaining why he did not tell the truth, Dr. South said that he had “used [his] prudential judgment to try to keep him [the student] at ease.” In other words, he could dismiss the student’s concerns if he pretended not to know the facts.

No one in the University Administration has ever addressed the student’s complaint or publicly (or privately to the student) expressed any concern for the way the student was treated. Dean of Arts & Sciences Richard Holz and President Lovell are both aware of all of these facts and have done nothing. The only person at Marquette who did stand up for the student was Professor McAdams. For this he was suspended, banished from campus and is going to be fired.

And that brings us back to academic freedom. This demonstrates why robust protection of free expression is required. The student has conservative Catholic views that are unpopular with many. Ms. Abbate was part of the faculty with contrary views. Marquette believes that an instructor was entitled to be protected from accurate criticism. It apparently believes the undergraduate student deserved to be told that his views could not be expressed in polite society.

Freedom of speech is an essential remedy for hypocrisy. Sadly, Marquette does not understand that.

Esenberg is the President and General Counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, and head of the legal team representing us in our battle with Marquette.

Feminism and Donald Trump

A provocative and often insightful essay from Robert Oscar Lopez in The Federalist. One passage in particular is of current interest:

Trump Treats Women As Feminists Demand

Second-wave feminism created Trump. Feeding on the scraps of Hefner’s and Mailer’s sleazy sex liberation, second-wave feminism misconstrued women’s plight as the consequences of chastity and patriarchy, which were actually cultural ideals that limited male behavior and forced men to sublimate their libido into chivalry and other respectful gestures toward women.

The anti-rape “yes means yes” consent laws governing college campuses are clumsily trying to replace the consent-focused purpose of marriage—“Do you take this man…”—without admitting that marriage was actually good for women. In a Buzzfeed video featuring feminists challenging male chauvinism, some of the feminist challenges are:

Why do you think we’re obsessed with you when we hook up?

[When we hook up], I just want you to leave too, I’m busy, I got s*** to do.

Why can’t I sleep with as many people as I want to, without being judged?

This landscape of transient female lust is only possible if there are men left in the wake of all these callous one-time encounters. Fifty years of life after “Sex and the Single Girl” led to … Donald J. Trump. Told by feminists that he is damned for wanting a traditional commitment, and told by Christian conservatives that he is damned for giving women what feminists said they wanted, Trump plays to the middle ground, where misogyny blossoms. He is not an isolated phenomenon.

There’s much to criticize about divorce. But one divorce is necessary: It is time for “civil rights” and the “sexual revolution” (including feminism) to part ways. There is no intersectionality here, just poisonous cross-purposes. In the meantime, both feminists and social conservatives need to brace themselves for the possible words “President Donald J. Trump.” Karma.

The Eloquence of Donald Trump

The quote on the graphic isn’t precisely accurate, but the inaccuracies are trivial. To see the original speech, check this video.

No, You Have It Right

Student Government and Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies to Show Discredited Film on Campus Rape

A story in the Marquette Tribune includes this short note at the end:

The CGSS (Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies) and MUSG (Marquette University Student Government) will show “The Hunting Ground” on April 25, followed by a panel of faculty and staff who will discuss campus sexual assault.

In fact, “The Hunting Ground” has been widely discredited in liberal and mainstream media outlets for its distortion of facts, and its attempt to convict for rape two fellows who are almost certainly innocent. See for example:

• Slate
• Harvard Law Record
• Reason
• New York
• The Harvard Crimson
• (And the conservative) National Review.

Are people who got to see the film going to be told about the controversy, or if so, will all the critics be dismissed as “rape apologists?”

When supposed scholars become activists, nothing good comes of it. And intellectual honesty is always the loser.  That’s the story of academic feminism.

Bullies at University of Missouri (Endorsed by Marquette President and Provost)

From Heatstreet:

Just days after protesters successfully toppled the University of Missouri’s president and chancellor last fall, a white student forwarded her professor a disturbing tweet. “#Mizzou black students need to stop protesting and start killing,” it said. “The white supremacy made it clear they ain’t hearing it.”

The ominous tweet had already received 16 retweets and 3 likes. The professor forwarded the message onto interim administration and the university’s police, adding that he was unsure whether the person who had sent the tweet was a student. But, he wrote, his student was scared to come to class.

To understand what was going on behind the scenes as the University of Missouri was rocked by protests during October and November of 2015, Heat Street and National Review requested access to email correspondence from key leaders at the school. The request yielded 7,400 pages of records.

News coverage at the time focused on black students’ claims of pervasive racism, pointing to several troublesome incidents as evidence of a bigoted culture on campus. But a look at the email correspondence of the university’s administrators and faculty members during the crisis reveals another side of the unrest: how protesters’ belligerence left many students, faculty and parents fearful of violence and concerned for their safety.

Here is some of what we found:

On Oct. 7, as the protests had started to pick up steam, a student wrote to the chancellor describing her encounter with a group of Black Lives Matter supporters.

“Everyone has freedom of speech and expression,” she wrote, “but this was a large group of people. I know I’m not alone in saying that I felt very unsafe and targeted when I encountered them,” describing “people screaming at me from the sidewalk.” She wrote that “all lives matter and discrimination should be fought against,” but she feared “that group brought more division, hostility and discrimination than that one man [yelling racial slurs] could have.”

On Nov. 9, the vice president for human resources, Betsy Rodriguez, wrote to Missouri’s president, Tim Wolfe, saying that she thought he needed to see some videos being circulated on Twitter under the hash tag #ConcernedStudent1950.
One video shows a protestor singling out people on campus, shouting, “If you’re uncomfortable, I did my job.” In the background, other protestors shout “power,” raising their fists.

“There are at least 2 [such Twitter videos] from Griffiths society today, and 2 from the dining halls (one of those – Plaza 900) included visiting high school students,” Rodriguez wrote. “The protestors are increasing in aggression and disruption. These are pretty scarey [sic].”

A conversation later that day between Rodriguez and Michael Kateman, the university’s director of internal communications, raised other “collective thoughts” on the protestors’ behavior.

“Even students not involved in the protests are getting agitated, fearful and concerned,” their notes say, pointing out an incident where outsiders drove two hours to join the protests on the University of Missouri’s campus. “The protestors are willing to interrupt non-related events to protest. …. Our concern is that the longer we wait to have mtg [to address the situation], the more we risk violence. The longer we wait, the greater the risk of violence.”

“Many of the students in [protest group #ConcernedStudent1950] are motivated by anger and don’t seem to have a plan of action even if their demands are met,” the student wrote. “Many of them don’t have a plan of contingency,” adding that “preparations need to be made in the case the student [hunger sriker] passes and Mizzou is threatened with rioting and senseless violence. While I have not gotten the sense that they would go after your residence, it could be a target despite your public efforts.”

President Wolfe and Chancellor Bowen Loftin caved to students’ demands and resigned on Nov. 9, effectively ending the crisis on campus. But the events of last fall have continued to haunt the school, which has seen its fundraising and enrollment plummet.

The email exchanges we reviewed also show impatience with frequent disruptions to academics at the school during the protests. Several parents and students wrote to complain about classes being repeatedly canceled in response to the demonstrations.

A day after Mizzou’s high-profile resignations, a university employee wrote to Wolfe describing her frustration after seeing the video where Melissa Click, a communications professor, called for “muscle” against a student reporter.

“My fear is that things are going to get out of hand and something very bad is going to happen,” she wrote. “My husband is a Sgt. For the University Police and he is having to be in the middle of this mess and having someone like Melissa Click do everything in her power to incite a riot will make things go from bad to worse. I normally take walks around the campus a couple of times a day but currently am afraid to do so because I am white. My daughter goes to school at Mizzou, has some night classes, and she is now afraid to walk around campus and go to class because she is white.”

That same day, a parent wrote to the heads of the university on behalf of her daughter, who she said was so frightened she was trying to transfer out of the university.

“My white female student is being mobbed on her way to class and shouted at while being pushed claiming she’s a racist solely because of the color of her skin. … In the last 2 days she’s had 3 cancelled classes so her teachers could participate in this nonsense. So we’re paying for our child’s teachers to protest instead of educate?” she wrote.

Administrators had repeatedly called for students to confront racism and engage in “an ongoing dialogue” about “moving the UM system forward.” On Nov. 10, one student wrote to the now-ousted chancellor expressing frustration about the results of such a conversation.

“I tried to foster peaceful, civilized discussion with a few peers,” the student wrote. “What I received was a combination of personal and racial attacks, with direct quotes such as ‘You can’t have an opinion on this because you are white,’ ‘You have no right to speak,’ and ‘Get the f*** out of the lounge.’ I will not fill out a bias report on this because it has been made perfectly clear to me by both faculty and students that my skin color apparently gives me immunity from racial harassment, and I can only be treated as the aggressor in these situations.”

On the intellectual level of the protests:

Still don't understand how #ConcernedStudent1950 feels? Maybe you need a closer look. Check it out. @mutv23 pic.twitter.com/GlPUqa0DlL

— Danny Konstantinovic (@Dannykons) November 6, 2015

✊🏿 RT @AnuragRC: The #ConcernedStudent1950 protest at @mucampusdining Plaza 900 earlier today. pic.twitter.com/2Y94lo1JVf

— A♭ (@AlexDonAudio) November 8, 2015

While the media were concentrating on the protestors, Missouri students unimpressed with the protests expressed their dissent on Yik Yak.

And who sided with the bullies at Missouri? A small group of Marquette students. And Marquette President Michael Lovell and Provost Daniel Myers.

Those that gathered were of various races and included faculty, staff, students and Milwaukee community members. University President Michael Lovell, Provost Daniel Myers and the mother of Dontre Hamilton, an unarmed black man who was killed by a white Milwaukee Police Officer, were also in attendance.

Lovell said he went to show support for the students and community. Myers added it was a proud moment to be a part of Marquette.

“It is well-timed since we are in the middle of Marquette’s campus climate study,” Myers said. “We are making big steps. These are awareness-raising moments.”

Awareness of what? How university administrators cower before leftist demonstrators, including those with little support among the general student body and even less among alumni?

Yes.

Science Guy: Punish Climate Skeptics

Letter to the Editor: Learn to Teach Philosophy

Dear Dr. McAdams,

Golden Eagle’s reply is one of the most risible bits of light comedy I’ve enjoyed recently. Dr. McAdams “bullied” the feminist, vegan philosopher about as much as the current Marquette Philosophy Department threatens the prestige of Princeton’s department. It was Ms. Abbate who, in an ideological pique, bullied an undergrad student into relinquishing his university’s guaranteed right to a free exchange of ideas. It was she who misled her class by presenting ideological name calling (“homophobia!” “racist!”) as authentic philosophy. The student had every right to defend the Roman Catholic use of natural law arguments against the moral integrity of gay marriage. At least one would think so at a Roman Catholic university. Were we dealing with one of those, the outcome might have been different.

If Ms. Abbate wasn’t qualified to deal with the natural law tradition in either its classical or newer forms, that’s nobody’s fault but her own and the department. Why wouldn’t Ms. Abbate have used this as a teachable moment to illustrate a natural law critique of Rawl’s notion of fairness? This was a perfect opportunity, provided by students themselves, to explore the contrast between two ethical theories. This is how the Socratic Method works, as opposed to an indoctrination of students according to the ideological preferences of the teacher. As a feminist, one might think she’d have shown more of an ethic of care or empathy toward the undergraduate student.

Since she did not do that, and did not act in a welcoming and inclusive manner towards his Catholic moral concerns, she surely violated the “values” trumpeted by Dr. Lovell.

Having been bullied by Ms. Abbate, the student sought fairness and justice from a department which uses a nose of wax approach to principles like these. He tried, in vain, to enlist support for the notion that philosophy should be what is done in a philosophy class. Having been effectively bullied at each point as he worked within the proper channels, he took his concern for the integrity of free speech at Marquette to Dr. McAdams. On his private blog he correctly supported the student’s right to contribute to a free exchange of ideas at the university. Dr. McAdams took no position on gay marriage, nor on homophobia, nor on the privileging of homosexual behavior. His concern was the student’s: teachers ought not to be bullies who impose ideologically driven censorship on their classes.

For openly questioning Marquette’s integrity related to its stated “values” of encouraging vigorous discussion of controversial issues, Dr. Lovell and his administrative cohorts attempted to bully Dr. McAdams into submission to the party line. To put it concisely, the university failed miserably in its fool’s errand. In media nationwide, Marquette is now a laughingstock. It’s an embarrassment to alums, like me, who have earned doctoral degrees in its Philosophy Department. The university's ongoing panegyric on Ms. Abbate and her penchant for censorship has not endeared Marquette to those interested in an authentic liberal education. Meanwhile, Dr. Lovell continues to compound his spectacularly poor treatment of Dr. McAdams. Dr. Lovell, with a determined commitment to inept self-justification, has reduced a substantive discussion of free speech to the bathos of a dime store novel. We are repeatedly regaled with the tale of a hapless, victimized ingenue.

The bullies in the long running comedy of administrative errors at Marquette are Ms. Abbate, Dr. Lovell, and the their accomplices in the bloated bureaucracy of lockstep diversity.

—
Ron McCamy, PhD
Philosophy Department
Moorpark College

Free Speech on College Campuses: Can We Take a Joke?

Most important insight here: most recently, it is the students and not the administrators who demand censorship.

Why is this? First, the “liberal” students are less and less traditional liberals who favor free expression, and more and more social justice warriors, utterly sure of their own righteousness, and utterly intolerant of other views.

We see this among the Marquette students who blocked traffic on Wisconsin Avenue, who lamented “violence” in Marquette classrooms. But nobody has been physically assaulted in a Marquette classroom (and least not within memory), and “violence” must simply mean students are hearing things they disagree with.

On their side was a certain Zoe Del Colle, who put together a list of supposed “racist” posts on Yik Yak. The vast majority were not racist at all, but merely at odds with the views of the self-righteous activists. (Facebook login required to see the page.)

And then we have young alumnus Aaron Ledesma, who wrote a blog post explicitly calling for opposition to gay marriage to be banned and shut up at Marquette.

But then the issue is: where do these folks come from? Some of it might be leftist parents. But it might also reflect the increasing political correctness in elementary and secondary schools. Education schools have become a hostile environment for conservative students.

These intolerant students are typically not the majority of any given student body, but this loud minority are the people petted, pampered and pandered to by university administrators. This certainly happened at Marquette, when University President Michael Lovell and Provost Daniel Myers protested with students demonstrating in sympathy with students at the University of Missouri (in other words, a bunch of bullies), and with the family of Dontre Hamilton (a mentally ill man who attacked a police officer with the officer’s nightstick and got shot).

It has been PanderFest at Marquette.

Tenure Would Protect Some Ideas

A Letter to the Editor in the Wall Street Journal, responding to their editorial about Marquette’s attempt to fire this blogger:

Doesn’t Professorial Tenure Exist for Things Like This?

Tenured Marquette Professor John McAdams punished for blogging, free speech, repression of the non-politically correct

April 14, 2016 1:54 p.m. ET

Marquette University Prof. John McAdams apparently doesn’t understand that academic freedom applies only to correct thought and speech (“Punished for Blogging at Marquette,” Review & Outlook, April 8). He would have been wiser to advocate for something like paying reparations to ISIS for the Crusades. It is discouraging to realize that families and students are impoverishing themselves for an education at Marquette, an institution run by people who seem not to think.

Brian R. Merrick

West Barnstable, Mass.

Marquette Warrior on Cream City Catholic

Fascists on the Left

Just for Hillary

Chicago Tribune on Marquette Attempt to Fire Warrior Blogger

Another column in a major media outlet, The Chicago Tribune. The author, Diana Sroka Rickert, outlines the facts of the case, and then draws some larger conclusions.

So a student disagreed with an instructor’s views on a polarizing issue. The instructor silenced the student. McAdams blogged about the incident, and after his blog post gained regional and national attention, Marquette silenced him too.

The fact that the university would revoke tenure from McAdams has sent shock waves through academia. Tenure is a treasured tenet of higher education, and revoking tenure usually is reserved for the most egregious of offenses.

. . .

“It’s left us with a lot of concern,” said Peter Bonilla of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. “If Marquette will do this to someone like McAdams, there’s no reason to expect they won’t do it to some other faculty member if they became a headache or PR disaster for the university.”

This isn’t just a campus problem. It’s exemplary of a dangerous societal movement underway: Instead of debating the merits of our ideas, those who hold unpopular opinions are publicly shamed, and then silenced. Their livelihoods are destroyed, often in coordinated, mob-like efforts. Lest anyone else ever think of speaking out or lending support to a cause, be forewarned — the price is steep.

Remember Brendan Eich? He resigned as CEO of Mozilla after just 10 days on the job because it was revealed that he donated to a California Proposition 8 campaign.

Just the other week, the Chicago Teachers Union threatened to kick out of the union any teachers who attempted to teach on April 1 instead of joining the union’s citywide walkout. The union intimidated teachers by pledging severe peer pressure: “No CTU member is to cross a picket line, and each school should designate a small crew to record any such activity,” an email to teachers warned. How’s that for congeniality among peers?

We’d like to think reasonable people can disagree on a variety of controversial topics. In reality, the costs associated with sharing or acting on your opinion are quickly beginning to outweigh the benefits.

It’s no wonder people are holding back more than before. Even the sharing of personal stories on Facebook has dropped 21 percent in the past year, according to The Information, a tech news website.

The fact that certain opinions are being suppressed means that somewhere, someone gets to decide what is socially and culturally acceptable and what is not. When does free speech cross the line to hate speech, and who makes that call? Instead of allowing our different views to compete in a marketplace of ideas, some entity — be it a university administrator, a government official or a powerbroker — is calling the shots on whose voice gets heard and who gets shut up.

“Popular views do not need protection,” McAdams wrote in a letter to Marquette. He’s right.

We need to reject this cultural shift, and that’s why the McAdams case matters so much. Every new idea, every major social movement, starts out as a minority opinion. If the majority of people gets to decide which ideas or opinions are acceptable and the consequences of speaking out are too painful, we may someday reach a point in which no minority opinion exists.

But that, of course, is what a lot of people want.

In response to Rickert’s column a certain Aaron Ledesma wrote an article explicitly insisting that any opposition to gay marriage should be silenced and shut up at Marquette.

And proponents of man-made global warming have a long history of trying to punish and stifle dissenting views.

So the idea that someone gets to decide what is socially and culturally acceptable and what is not is attractive to people who think that they and their friends will be the people who get to do the deciding.

Rickert, by the way, is a former student of ours, and part of a cohort of outstanding conservative students who started an alternative campus paper at Marquette, The Warrior. Competing with official campus papers, it bested them in journalistic awards.

Confronting Anti-Israel Prejudice

A fellow named Jordan Holmer has the courage (or perhaps merely the chutzpah) to challenge the Palestinian lobby on campus. On Twitter, he has taken exception to a fake wall (called an “Apartheid Wall”) erected on campus by Students for Justice in Palestine. His tweets are included below:

Why @MarquetteU allows anti-Semites to demonstrate in center of campus is beyond me pic.twitter.com/fGiuhRMTpr

— Jordan Holmer (@kybldmstr) April 14, 2016

I feel for every Jewish student on campus today #SJPisHate

— Jordan Holmer (@kybldmstr) April 14, 2016

I bet if it was an image of a KKK cross burning Marquette would jump into action pretty fast

— Jordan Holmer (@kybldmstr) April 14, 2016

It is long past time that somebody challenged the Palestinian lobby on campus. Their motto, shown on the wall, is “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free.” Although they deny it, the slogan calls for the end of the State of Israel. The graphic below shows it: the map does not show a two state solution. It shows a single state, which would be dominated by Palestinians. Jews, if allowed to remain, would be a persecuted minority.


Palestinians don’t like the wall Israel has built because it has ended suicide bomber attacks. Again, they won’t admit that.

The Palestinian lobby on campus has been pandered to and petted by campus bureaucrats and leftist faculty. Firmly on their side have been the Center for Gender and Sexualities Studies and the organizations that sponsored “Israeli Apartheid Week,” including the Office of International Studies, Campus Ministry, and the Office of Intercultural Engagement. So it is good to see some opposition.

This is not to say we agree with Holmer on everything. He believes the wall should not have been allowed by Marquette. We think that if Students for Justice in Palestine got the proper approval from Student Affairs, they have a right to their demonstration.

What we would like to see is a counter demonstration. But some push back on Twitter is a start.

Letter to the Editor: Freedom of Discussion at Schools that are Really Religious

Professor McAdams,

I am a student at Brigham Young University. I just read a news article talking about your battle with Marquette University. I don’t have any witty analogy to Reformation era religious persecutions/politics to accompany this but I just want you to know I support you in your efforts against the close minded administrator/Inquisitors.

In the past, BYU has been labelled an institution where academic liberty is shunted toward a conservative viewpoint but from experience, I feel a student here who politely advocated gay marriage in classroom discussion wouldn’t be targeted by other students, faculty, or administrators. If freedom of speech protected to such an extent at a conservative, Mormon school then Marquette is clearly out of line.

If there is some way concerned students/citizens can support your cause, let me know.

Thanks,

Jordan Smith

This tracks well with what we know about schools that are really religious, rather than (like Marquette) only nominally so.

Interestingly, Brigham Young does not have the official guarantees of free expression that secular schools have. For example, one adjunct faculty member was dismissed for writing in favor of gay marriage. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education does not attack institutions like Brigham Young for this sort of thing, since the institution makes it clear that it limits speech in certain ways. Thus everybody who applies there (whether for admission or a teaching job) knows and accepts the policies.

But official rules don’t necessarily correspond with cultural norms, and in schools were free expression exists in principle rigid intolerance can exist in practice. Of course, the converse can be true, and often is. Faithful Mormon faculty who oppose gay marriage are likely more tolerant of classroom disagreement with their views than politically correct secular leftists at places like Marquette.

Outsmarting the Dealer

Marquette’s Defensive, Evasive and Dishonest Attack on the Warrior Blogger

Marquette today came out with an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) about our case. It’s an amazing collection of evasion, dissembling, and outright falsehood.

Let’s analyze it piece by piece (Marquette’s statement in sans serif typeface):

Dr. McAdams disagreed with the way one of our graduate students led a classroom discussion.

We “disagreed” with a teacher who told a student that he could not express opposition to gay marriage because doing so would be “homophobic,” and would “offend” any gay student in class. But Marquette implies this was merely some disagreement about pedagogical philosophy.

Instead of expressing those concerns through established internal channels, he chose to blog about our graduate student . . .

In the first place, the undergraduate student had attempted to “raise the concern” (note the euphemistic way mistreatment of a student is described) with the Arts & Sciences office, and then was referred to the Philosophy Department. There he was met with hostility, and received no redress at all.

Of course, bureaucrats would like all cases of misconduct to be quietly dealt with through “internal channels.” This is the way the Catholic Church handled the priestly sex abuse crisis.

Just how did that work out?

Keeping misconduct quiet removes the incentive for the bureaucrats to fix the problem. Further, the public has a right to know that at Marquette, a supposed “Catholic university,” this kind of abuse could happen.

— publicly shaming her,

What Lovell calls “public shaming” was simply journalism. Any reporting of misconduct could be called “public shaming.”

For example, members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at the University of Oklahoma were shown on video voicing a racist chant on a bus. This was widely reported, and some of the fraternity members received death threats.

Was the media guilty of “public shaming?”

Had we, for example, written about a male professor who sexually harassed a female student, it’s inconceivable that we would be charged with “shaming” the professor.

questioning her values

Questioning the values of an instructor who said that certain opinions about marriage (and indeed the “opinions” of the Catholic Church) could not be expressed in a Marquette classroom? Absolutely!

Why does Marquette not question such “values?”

and including a link to her contact information.

Untrue. We included a link to her blog, which happened to contain her contact information (something we had not even noticed when we put up the post). The purpose of the link was obvious from the context. As we noted:

Aside from the audio, it’s easy to see how Abbate would have said what we reported. Her blog is titled “Thoughts from a Vegan Feminist Philosopher.” Some of the stuff seems quirky and bland, such as her criticism for a Catholic parish for having a pig wrestling contest.

Less benign is her essay titled “Yes All Men…Contribute to the Prevalence of Rape.” Yes, it’s a common theme among feminists and Exhibit One of the reality that hard-core feminism is, at root, about sexist antipathy toward males.

And Marquette continues:

He sought opportunities to amplify his public shaming of her on cable news and talk radio.

When we came under attack from Abbate and her allies, we defended ourself in the media. This was supposedly bad.

Through those actions, he exposed her to a constant stream of threats and hateful messages.

In fact, she received no threats, as she herself admitted.

She did receive some nasty e-mails. But nobody can report unfavorable information about anybody without the possibility of some jerks writing them and saying abusive things. This had never happened before in the ten-year history of our blog.

Again, should the media have declined to report the misconduct of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon members (see above)? A typical case in the media is when some high school teacher has sex with a student. The name of the teacher is always mentioned.

Has Dr. McAdams been fired?

No. He has been suspended without pay but with benefits through the fall semester of the 2016-17 academic year, in accordance with the Faculty Hearing Committee’s unanimous recommendation, and given a clear path that would facilitate his return to campus. Before returning to the faculty, he must provide an assurance that he will not continue behaviors that harm others within the Marquette community.

The “assurance” is a demand that the Faculty Hearing Committee did not make: that we apologize and take a loyalty oath. To be specific, Lovell demanded:

• Your acknowledgement and acceptance of the unanimous judgment of the peers who served on the Faculty Hearing Committee.
• Your affirmation and commitment that your future actions and behavior will adhere to the standards of higher education as defined in the Marquette University Faculty Handbook, Mission Statement and Guiding Values.
• Your acknowledgement that your November 9, 2014, blog post was reckless and incompatible with the mission and values of Marquette University and you express deep regret for the harm suffered by our former graduate student and instructor, Ms. Abbate.

As for “behaviors that harm others:” this apparently means any blogging that criticizes anybody at Marquette or reveals any misconduct at Marquette. In other words, the demand is that we renounce our right to academic freedom.

Is this issue about freedom of speech or academic freedom?

Where Dr. McAdams crossed the line is when he launched a personal attack against a student, subjecting her to threats and hateful messages.

Lovell is calling our reporting on misconduct by a graduate instructor a “personal attack.” By this standard, any reporting of misconduct of anybody at Marquette could be called a “personal attack.”

Was Dr. McAdams asked to apologize?

President Lovell explained in his call for decency that Dr. McAdams was asked to take responsibility for his actions and to show remorse for the consequences of his irresponsible conduct. Dr. McAdams was never asked to make a public apology, and never was asked to apologize for any opinion or political view he may hold.

Compare this with the direct quote (above) from Lovell’s letter to us. This level of spin and evasiveness is downright dishonest.

Is this an issue related to Marquette’s Catholic identity?

We have taken the position we have because of our Catholic identity and our values. This issue is about conduct and standing up for a student who was publicly shamed by a professor. U.S. Catholic magazine shared this perspective.

Interesting that they mention liberal U.S. Catholic, which is the only Catholic outlet that has sided with Marquette. Every other one that has dealt with the issue has taken Marquette to task (except for the liberal National Catholic Reporter, which ran a neutral article).

Also, secular outlets, including liberal ones like Slate, the Huffington Post and The Atlantic have criticized Marquette on this issue. So has the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. So has the conservative Wall Street Journal.

Across campus, you can find Marquette’s Catholic identity flourishing.

Right, it is flourishing when students are demeaned and shut up for wanting to argue for the Catholic view of marriage. Or when a mural in the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center honors one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Terrorists.”

Or when Marquette sponsors a “Femsex” seminar in which participants are expected to produce a piece of erotica (read “pornography”) and have a “nonjudgmental” discussion of abortion, pornography and prostitution, and color pictures of female genitalia in the “Cunt Coloring Book.”

Or when instructors are fearful about discussing the Catholic view of marriage because they may be charged with “sexual harassment.”

Or when Marquette “likes” a tweet that demands that opposition to gay marriage be shut up on campus, as “hate speech.”

If this is flourishing, what would languishing look like?

Did Dr. McAdams criticize a fellow instructor, or a student?

The target of Dr. McAdams’ blog was a graduate student instructor. She remains a student first.

And how is she a “student first?” Because that’s convenient for Marquette. The instructor, Cheryl Abbate, was the “Instructor of Record” in the course: she made out the syllabus, she handled the lectures and class discussion, she graded the papers and assigned the grades.

Click to Enlarge

Abbate, at the time of the incident, was 27 years old and in the U.S. military. She had taught the class multiple times previously.

The real “student” was the undergraduate who was bullied because of his views on gay marriage.

The university has established channels in place for faculty members to express concerns. These standard channels of authority, which all university faculty members are expected to follow as a condition of employment as defined by the Faculty Handbook, include an associate dean, dean of the college or the provost.

The Faculty Handbook outlines “channels of authority” which can handle complaints, but there is no rule whatsoever banning the public airing of abuses at Marquette. Any such rule would be at odds with faculty contractual guarantees of academic freedom.

Again, all bureaucrats would prefer that cases of misconduct be kept quiet and internal. But journalists (and that includes faculty bloggers) have no obligation to accommodate them on this.

In fact, where the bureaucrats have failed to address the problem (as they did in this case) or where there is a systemic problem (as politically correct intolerance is at Marquette) there is actually a moral imperative to “go public.”

Marquette University “Likes” Tweet That Calls for Shutting Down Opposition to Gay Marriage

Here is a tweet from a certain Aaron Jay Ledesma, taking issue with an article in the Chicago Tribune by Diana Rickert, defending this blogger’s academic freedom at Marquette.

Here's my response to @Diana_Rickert's @chicagotribune article regarding former @MarquetteU professor John McAdams. https://t.co/5rJHAgPtt1

— Aaron Jay Ledesma (@aaronjayledesma) April 13, 2016

(You have to be signed in to Twitter, and click on the text of the tweet to see who liked it.  At the moment, Marquette is there.)

The article tweeted explicitly says that opposition to gay marriage should be banned at Marquette. Quoting it:

I disagree [with Rickert]. This is a classic response from people who feel entitled to share their disagreement with gay marriage. They can’t stand it when people tell them to keep their bigoted, unsolicited opinions to themselves. The instructor [Cheryl Abbate] did not ask for feedback. This student was out of place. This student wanted to engage in a debate about gay marriage. The professor who had the decency to prevent it was publicly bullied for doing the right thing. Bullied by colleague.

I believe both McAdams and Rickert are wrong. They don’t understand Marquette like I do. They think because it’s a Catholic university, it should allow students to voice their opposition to gay marriage in any way they want. Hateful, ignorant opposition is not the Catholic way.

That’s not what Catholicism stands for.
That’s not what Marquette stands for.
That’s not what America stands for.

Marquette is a place of excellence, faith, leadership, and service. All of this is pursued for the greater glory of God and the common benefit of the human community. Therefore, it makes sense that Marquette, similarly to Pope Francis, respects all people no matter their race, religion, creed, gender or sexuality.

Of course, for Ledesma, respecting people seems to mean protecting them from opinions they dislike. Even if they are at a supposed Catholic university, and the opinions are Catholic teaching. And he seems to have no respect for people who differ from him on marriage.

And of course, Pope Francis has not retracted the teaching that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

Ledesma adds that:

• Abbate has every right to shut down racist, homophobic, and discriminatory language in her classroom.
• More people should take Abbate’s stance and say, “NO. This language will not be tolerated in institutions of learning.”
• It’s about time society take a stand against hate speech, which is not the same as free speech.

This appears to be just the routine intolerance of politically active gays (not all gays, but a troublingly large portion of the politically active ones).

But the kicker is this: Marquette University “liked” the post!

Just in case Marquette finds a way to retract the “like” comment, here is a screen capture showing the “like.”



This is the first official statement we have seen from Marquette asserting that certain opinions about marriage should be shut down.

Rogue?

At the moment, we don’t know who controls Marquette’s Twitter account, and maybe somebody went “rogue.” We will query Marquette about this, and update this post with their response.

But there can be no doubt that the attitude that Ledesma expresses is widely supported at Marquette.

Update

Brian Dorrington, official spokesman for Marquette, has not responded to our e-mail and phone call. If Marquette fails to distance itself from this tweet, the only inference is that Marquette has endorsed the Ledesma article.

Social Justice Warriors: Quit Appropriating Stuff From White Males!

Attempt to Fire Warrior Blogger: Marquette Getting Pounded on Facebook

Marquette posts President Michael Lovell’s grossly hypocritical “A call for decency” attacking this blogger on the Marquette Facebook page, and the comment section explodes.

While a few comments support Lovell, the vast majority pound him for has lack of support for free speech and for the Catholic mission of Marquette.

See this post and the comments under it.

And the criticism of Lovell spills over in comments to posts that have nothing to do with this blogger.

For example, one about “Summer Studies / / Marquette University”

Another example: “See Yourself at Marquette University”

This is significant, since people who visit the Marquette page are not a group self-selected on the basis of their political views. Of course the people who comment on our case on the National Review site or the Breitbart site will tend to agree with us. But it seems those who post on the Marquette Facebook page do too.

One final note: At the moment, there are no “Guest Posts” on the page. There were several, pounding Marquette over its attempt to fire us, and they have been deleted.

Good News and Bad News

Terrorist Supporter to Speak on Marquette Campus

Tonight at Marquette: a speaker named Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi, who has consorted with terrorists.

From the Facebook page of Marquette’s Center for Gender and Sexualities Studies:

Today, we are excited to have Dr. Simona Sharoni and Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi present on the incredible work they have been...
Posted by Marquette University Center for Gender and Sexualities Studies on Monday, April 11, 2016

So just who is Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi?

Her Facebook page shows her to be virulently anti-Israel.

She recently made a trip to the Middle East to meet with terrorists.

A California Public Records Act inquiry revealed that multiple professors from San Francisco State University met with terrorists on a trip funded by the university. Professors Rabab Abdulhadi and Joanne Barker, along with Abdulhadi’s husband, met with terrorists Leila Khaled and Sheikh Raed Salah during the “Labor Delegation to Palestine 2014” which began on January 5th, 2014 and concluded on February 14th, 2014.

Eight organizations- the AMCHA Initiative, Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel, Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, Simon Wiesenthal Center Campus Outreach, StandWithUs, and Zionist Organization of America- sent a letter to CSU Chancellor Timothy White, SFSU President Leslie Wong, CSU Vice Chancellor and Chief Audit Officer Larry Mendel and CSU Attorney Carrie Hemphill Reith concerning the matter.

Leila Khaled is “a convicted hijacker and the most famous member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist organization responsible for 159 terrorist acts such as bombings, armed assault and assassinations, resulting in numerous injuries and deaths including those of more than 20 US citizens,” the groups noted.

Sheikh Raed Salah has been convicted of funding the terrorist organization Hamas and sat in prison from 2003 - 2005. In the letter to school administration the organizations also highlighted that, “In 2008, Salah was charged with incitement to violence and racism. In 2010, Salah was also arrested for his participation on the Mavi Marmara, part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Salah was recently incarcerated again on charges of incitement to violence.”

Was Abdulhadi just a scholar wanting to gather information? Again, her Facebook page shows her to be a supporter of violent radicals.

One post, for example, shows her to be a supporter of Oscar Lopez Rivera.

Posted by Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi on Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Who is this fellow? A Puerto Rican terrorist. Rivera has been:

personally involved in bombing and incendiary attacks across the country for at least five years prior to Méndez’s [sic] involvement and knowledge, has been a prime recruiter for members of the underground terrorist group, and has been a key trainer in bombing, sabotage and other techniques of guerilla warfare. He has set up a series of safehouses and bomb factories across the country, the searches of which have uncovered literally hundreds of pounds of dynamite and other forms of high explosive, blasting caps, timing devices, huge caches of weapons and stockpiles of ammunition, silencers, sawed-off shotguns, disguises, stolen and altered identity documents, and the proceeds of the armed robberies of locations such as a National Guard Armory, Chicago’s Carter-Mondale Re-Election headquarters, radio and communications companies, as well as a variety of stolen vehicles.

Her Facebook page celebrates a “unity pact” between terrorist organization Hamas and (terrorism condoning) PLO.

And it also lionizes another pair of Puerto Rican terrorists:

Posted by Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi on Monday, April 21, 2014

Should She Be At Marquette?

Should Marquette allow a speaker who supports terrorism?

We have said that there is nothing wrong, in principle, with a Klansman speaking at any university. Students might learn something — although it’s more likely to be something about political pathology than about public policy.

The same principle applies here.

But what would we think of an organization that continually wants to bring Klansmen to campus? We would suspect, rightly, that they were racist.

So what are we to think about the Center for Gender and Sexualities Studies, and the organizations that sponsored “Israeli Apartheid Week,” including the Office of International Studies, Campus Ministry, and the Office of Intercultural Engagement? We have to suspect that they are anti-Israel, and aren’t too scrupulous about wanting the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians solved by peaceful means.

Should you Go?

We are late getting this post up, but we would urge anybody so inclined to go to the talk. Particularly, Abdulhadi should be asked some civil but pointed questions:

• Do you support a two state solution to the Israel/Palestinian conflict?
• Are you willing to condemn Hamas rocket attacks on Israel?
• Are you willing to condemn attacks on Jews in Jerusalem?

Her responses will be revealing.

Update

An e-mail correspondent notes the following:

It’s odd that it is group pushing gender equality and rights for gays that is sponsoring this, since Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has any sort of de facto or legal guarantees for such rights. The Palestinian territories and Gaza are plagued with honor killings (to which the authorities turn a blind eye) and diminished citizenship for women, and are hardly havens for gay rights. Abdulhadi calls such legal protections Israeli “pinkwashing” — as though the rights are instituted to provide a cover for colonialist iniquity.

Good point. And the reality is that the Center for Gender and Sexualities is, like the other centers of leftist activism on campus, not about women or gays. It’s about leftist politics. Thus, including the anti-Israel Palestinian lobby in their coalition is more important than representing the interests of gays and women.

Global Warming Fascism: Use Government to Shut Up Skepticism

From the Wall Street Journal, an article about the bullying and intimidation deployed against any group that takes a less than alarmist view of global warming.

Punishing Climate-Change Skeptics

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Andrew M. Grossman

Galileo Galilei was tried in 1633 for spreading the heretical view that the Earth orbits the sun, convicted by the Roman Catholic Inquisition, and remained under house arrest until his death. Today’s inquisitors seek their quarry’s imprisonment and financial ruin. As the scientific case for a climate-change catastrophe wanes, proponents of big-ticket climate policies are increasingly focused on punishing dissent from an asserted “consensus” view that the only way to address global warming is to restructure society—how it harnesses and uses energy. That we might muddle through a couple degrees’ of global warming over decades or even centuries, without any major disruption, is the new heresy and must be suppressed.

The Climate Inquisition began with Michael Mann’s 2012 lawsuit against critics of his “hockey stick” research—a holy text to climate alarmists. The suggestion that Prof. Mann’s famous diagram showing rapid recent warming was an artifact of his statistical methods, rather than an accurate representation of historical reality, was too much for the Penn State climatologist and his acolytes to bear.

Among their targets (and our client in his lawsuit) was the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank prominent for its skeptical viewpoint in climate-policy debates. Mr. Mann’s lawsuit seeks to put it, along with National Review magazine, out of business. Four years on, the courts are still pondering the First Amendment values at stake. In the meantime, the lawsuit has had its intended effect, fostering legal uncertainty that chills speech challenging the “consensus” view.

Mr. Mann’s lawsuit divided climate scientists—many of whom recognized that it threatened vital scientific debate—but the climate Inquisition was only getting started. The past year has witnessed even more heavy-handed attempts to enforce alarmist doctrine and stamp out dissent.

Assuming the mantle of Grand Inquisitor is Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.). Last spring he called on the Justice Department to bring charges against those behind a “coordinated strategy” to spread heterodox views on global warming, including the energy industry, trade associations, “conservative policy institutes” and scientists. Mr. Whitehouse, a former prosecutor, identified as a legal basis for charges that the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, the federal statute enacted to take down mafia organizations and drug cartels.

In September a group of 20 climate scientists wrote to President Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch encouraging them to heed Mr. Whitehouse and launch a RICO investigation targeting climate skeptics. This was necessary since, they claimed, America’s policy response to climate change was currently “insufficient,” because of dissenting views regarding the risks of climate change. Email correspondence subsequently obtained through public-records requests revealed that this letter was also coordinated by Mr. Whitehouse.

Reps. Ted Lieu (D., Calif.) and Mark DeSaulnier (D., Calif.) followed up with a formal request for the Justice Department to launch an investigation, specifically targeting Exxon Mobil for its funding of climate research and policy organizations skeptical of extreme warming claims. Attorney General Lynch announced in testimony this month that the matter had been referred to the FBI “to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for what we could take action on.” Similar investigations are already spearheaded by state attorneys general in California and New York.

Meanwhile, Mr. Whitehouse, joined by Sens. Edward Markey (D., Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), sent letters to a hundred organizations—from private companies to policy institutes—demanding that they turn over information about funding and research relating to climate issues. In his response to the senators, Cato Institute President John Allison called the effort “an obvious attempt to chill research into and funding of public policy projects you don’t like.”

Intimidation is the point of these efforts. Individual scientists, think tanks and private businesses are no match for the vast powers that government officials determined to stifle dissent are able to wield. An onslaught of investigations—with the risk of lawsuits, prosecution and punishment—is more than most can afford to bear. As a practical reality, defending First Amendment rights in these circumstances requires the resources to take on the government and win—no matter the cost or how long it takes.

It also requires taking on the Climate Inquisition directly. Spurious government investigations, driven by the desire to suppress a particular viewpoint, constitute illegal retaliation against protected speech and, as such, can be checked by the courts, with money damages potentially available against the federal and state perpetrators. If anyone is going to be intimidated, it should be officials who are willing to abuse their powers to target speech with which they disagree.

That is why we are establishing the Free Speech in Science Project to defend the kind of open inquiry and debate that are central to scientific advancement and understanding. The project will fund legal advice and defense to those who need it, while executing an offense to turn the tables on abusive officials. Scientists, policy organizations and others should not have to fear that they will be the next victims of the Climate Inquisition—that they may face punishment and personal ruin for engaging in research and advocating their views.

The principle of the First Amendment, the Supreme Court recognized in Dennis v. United States (1951), is that “speech can rebut speech, propaganda will answer propaganda, free debate of ideas will result in the wisest governmental policies.” For that principle to prevail—in something less than the 350 years it took for the Catholic Church to acknowledge its mistake in persecuting Galileo—the inquisition of those breaking from the climate “consensus” must be stopped.