Tag: universities

Academic Center Within Georgetown’s Prestigious School of Foreign Service Has Long History of Terror-Supporting Leaders

An academic center at Georgetown University that sits within its prestigious School of Foreign Service has a history of fostering support for Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other Islamist groups, a Washington Free Beacon review found.

Georgetown’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU), founded in 1993, has hosted scholars sympathetic to Islamism since its inception. John Esposito, the center’s founder and a professor of religion and international affairs and of Islamic studies at Georgetown, has long defended terrorist groups and collaborated with jihadist figures.

As the Free Beacon reported in June, approximately 25 percent of all graduates from the ACMCU—which operates within the School of Foreign Service—enter government positions around the world after receiving their degrees. The ACMCU’s history appears likely to draw congressional scrutiny during a Tuesday morning House Education and Workforce Committee hearing featuring Georgetown interim president Robert Groves, as does the funding it has received from the Muslim Brotherhood-linked International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT).

The IIIT, the Free Beacon reported, had a relationship with the now-defunct SAAR Foundation, which ceased operations after the FBI raided its offices on suspicion of terrorism financing. Georgetown acknowledged that the IIIT “contributed $1 million or more to Georgetown” in 2017 when the university invited the organization’s leadership to its 1789 Society for large donors.

Esposito’s scholarly and professional history includes many instances of either the defense of or support for terror groups and figures. When asked whether Hamas was a terrorist organization during a 2000 interview with the Middle East Affairs Journal, for instance, Esposito hedged.

“One can’t make a clear statement about Hamas,” he said. “One has to distinguish between Hamas in general and the action of its military wing, and then one has also to talk about specific actions. Some actions by the military wing of Hamas can be seen as acts of resistance, but other actions are acts of retaliation, particularly when they target civilians.”

Esposito had more charitable words for Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a late Islamic scholar and intellectual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood whom the Clinton administration banned from entering the United States.

“If you look at Qaradawi’s work—I actually just finished working on him for a new book that I have—he goes out of his way to say that he is not anti-Jewish but he is anti-Israeli, anti-Israeli occupation of Palestine, and that is what he is talking about,” Esposito said. “So, he will talk about Jews again as ‘People of the Book,’ et cetera, but when it comes to Palestine, he defines that situation politically.”

Al-Qaradawi’s work, which Esposito referenced, included praise for Adolf Hitler.

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Harvard ethics professor fired for dishonesty maintains her innocence

A Harvard University professor who lost her tenure due to data fraud maintains she is innocent and said she plans to fight for her reputation in court.

Francesca Gino became the first person since the 1940s to lose tenure at Harvard University after the school investigated allegations she tampered with data. The investigation followed accusations made by a trio of behavioral scientists with the blog Data Colada.

Gino (pictured), a business ethics professor, consistently denied the allegations and is fighting back with a lawsuit against Harvard. A judge previously ruled against her lawsuit against the Data Colada authors. However, the judge ruled Gino’s breach of contract claims can continue. She filed a further response on June 23, while Harvard has filed other motions in the past week.

In an unsigned email to The College Fix, Gino’s team noted several major concerns about the integrity of Harvard’s investigation.

According to Gino’s team, Harvard’s investigation report did not include the underlying data needed to independently verify Harvard’s claims. That is, the school denied the professor a proper forensic evaluation and access to raw datasets.

The response also said the burden of proof was reversed. Harvard’s own policy requires that the university proves misconduct occurred and not place the burden on the accused, but Gino was forced to prove her innocence without the backing of resources. Harvard was also supposed to prove the misconduct was committed “recklessly,” “knowingly,” or “intentionally.”

For example, Gino was reportedly not allowed to question witnesses, including her own co-authors and research assistants. She was also unable to obtain documentation that could potentially show who accessed or edited the data, Gino’s team said.

Gino’s team also noted four of five papers under scrutiny were published more than six years before the investigation, which falls outside the statute of limitations for misconduct investigations set by both Harvard and federal standards.

“The available evidence simply did not allow a thorough audit of the relevant data sets,” the email read.

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Conservatives Adopt Left-Wing Tactics To Allegedly Fix Universities

“Without broader hiring reforms, proto right-wing employees will continue to control big business. Several states are trying to dictate what conservative executives should and shouldn’t instruct employees about, but these efforts similarly don’t reach the core of big business’s sickness – the commercial monopoly of right-wing thought that guarantees its continued malignancy.” It’s bothersome, isn’t it? Members of the left trying to force their viewpoints into private businesses.

Except that a left winger didn’t write the above. No doubt they have, but what you just read is a rewording of the 2nd paragraph of an opinion piece penned by conservative professor emeritus (UC Santa Cruz) John Ellis. Ellis’s was titled “The Public Needs Campus Viewpoint Diversity.” Here’s what he wrote:

“Without broader staffing reforms, radical left-wing professors will still control higher education. Several states are trying to dictate what professors should and shouldn’t teach, but these efforts similarly don’t reach the core of academia’s sickness—the political monopoly that guarantees its continued malignancy.”

To read Ellis is to see the unfortunate road conservatives are traveling on to allegedly fix university education. For the longest time those same conservatives correctly pushed back against quotas of any kind. How things have changed. It’s conservatives allowing their obsessive desire to alter the ideological mix on college campuses to turn them into the left wingers they long abhorred. It won’t work.

The simple, rather bullish truth that conservatives refuse to acknowledge amid their relentless push to nail left-wing universities is that they’re that way largely because it’s left-wingers who tend to migrate toward academia. Conversely, a right that’s reverent of private enterprise tends to migrate toward private enterprise.

Think Jeff Bezos. The founder of Amazon attended Princeton, naturally he couldn’t major in the industry he invented, but eventually he took his talents from the hedge fund world to Seattle where he started Amazon. Bezos is a known free thinker (see his letter about looming changes to the editorial page lean at the Washington Post), at which point let’s ask a simple question: would conservatives have preferred that he had gone the academic route after college to equalize the ideological balance at elite colleges allegedly defined by “rot”? Hopefully the question answers itself.

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Is This Why He Claimed to Be Black? Mamdani’s Full College Record Reportedly Leaked

To the disappointment of many liberals, Democratic New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was outed by The New York Times last week for claiming to be black on an application to Columbia University.

According to a report published Thursday in the Times, Mamdani checked the boxes for both “Asian” and “Black or African American.”

The bombshell information was discovered within a trove of stolen data released last month. An anonymous hacker was checking to see if the Ivy League school was still using affirmative action in its decision making, despite a Supreme Court ruling that labeled it discriminatory.

The question is: ” With such an elite background, why did Mamdani feel the need to falsely portray himself as black?” It appears a report from Christopher Rufo has some answers. The radical socialist didn’t have high enough SAT scores to make the cut.

“I have obtained Mamdani’s full Columbia application, which might help unravel this mystery,” Rufo wrote on his website Monday. “According to the materials, Mamdani scored a 2140 out of 2400 on the SAT. At the time, this was below the median SAT score for admitted students at Columbia.”

He added, “Given the prevailing distribution by race, well below the median SAT score for Asian students, but likely above the median SAT score for black students — hence, the advantage of marking ‘black.’”

Rufo also pointed out that Mamdani’s father has been a professor at Columbia for years and that it would be absurd to think the mayoral candidate didn’t know exactly what he was doing when he filled out the application.

Another interesting part of the saga is that despite his father working there — and his mother being a known filmmaker — Columbia rejected him anyway. Was the school upset about him stepping over the line, when he checked the box for “black”?

Mamdani’s hypocrisy also begs the question about “cultural appropriation.” He’s trying to help lead a movement that is constantly angered when people use elements of a minority race in their clothing, diet, and everyday activities.

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New York Times Readers and Staffers Unable to Handle a Rare Brush with Objective Journalism

The New York Times is experiencing backlash among its staff and readers after it held New York City mayor candidate Zohran Mamdani to account on Thursday for apparently lying on his application to Columbia University by claiming he was black.

Law professor and legal commentator Jonathan Turley wrote about the incident on his website Sunday, detailing the drama unfolding at the paper of record.

“The paper was denounced by its own staff and liberal pundits called for the entire editorial staff to be canned,” Turley wrote. “Why? Because The New York Times actually reported news that was deemed harmful to the Democrats, specifically Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani.”

The Times’ assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust, Patrick Healy, wrote a long thread on the social media site X that stated: “When we hear anything of news value, we try to confirm it through direct sources. Mr. Mamdani confirmed this information in an interview with The Times.”

Healy seemed like a hostage. He rattled off 11 tweets as if he was waving his hands in the air, screaming his defense. Ultimately, he bowed to the mob.

The Times couldn’t have pulled the story. That would’ve been professional suicide. But this step-by-step explainer was the next best thing. This is not a good look for American journalism.

“For liberals, it was an utter nightmare,” Turley continued. “For a party still defined by identity politics, Mamdani’s false claim over his race left many uncertain about how to react. The left has always maintained a high degree of tolerance for false claims by its own leaders, from Sen. Elizabeth Warren claiming to be a native American to Sen. Richard Blumenthal claiming to have served in the Vietnam War.”

Turley also rightly pointed out that many people who patronize the Times are emotionally triggered. The legal scholar highlighted the “anger” felt by the far-left when this happens and compared it to how liberals on college campuses feel when opposing views are offered.

“The fact is that the Mamdani story was obvious news — and confirmed by the candidate himself,” Turley declared. “Mamdani identified as both Asian and African American on his 2009 Columbia University application, according to the New York Times.”

The Times piece stated: “Columbia, like many elite universities, used a race-conscious affirmative action admissions program at the time. Reporting that his race was Black or African American in addition to Asian could have given an advantage to Mr. Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and spent his earliest years there.”

“In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Mamdani, 33, said he did not consider himself either Black or African American, but rather ‘an American who was born in Africa,’” the story continued. “He said his answers on the college application were an attempt to represent his complex background given the limited choices before him, not to gain an upper hand in the admissions process.”

Mamdani cheated the system, and in the end, he didn’t even get accepted to Columbia. For someone who pushes “equality” at all costs, isn’t that significant? Doesn’t it prove he’s a liar, a fraud, and an opportunist?

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‘We accept virtually all students of color,’ Grand Valley State director says

Civil rights experts say further investigation is needed into potential racial discrimination at Grand Valley State University

Grand Valley State University’s Honors College privileges racial minorities for scholarships and admissions, according to emails obtained by The College Fix.

The favoritism has been going on for years, possibly decades, based on the comments made by the director of the Frederick Meijer Honors College.

“We accept virtually all students of color, except in cases in which the student’s writing is such that we’re convinced they would struggle far too much in our first-year sequences,” Professor Roger Gilles wrote in an email to colleagues.

The April 4, 2022 email goes into further detail about how the university works together to privilege non-white students.

“This year, in fact, we accepted a ‘Signature Saturday’ student with a high GPA but an SAT score of 880..!” Gilles, the director of the honors college, wrote to several other administrators in the program. “We are open to changing the profile of the typical Honors student.”

Signature Saturday is an open house event for the honors college. An SAT score of 880 would place an incoming freshman in fall 2022 below the 25th percentile, according to public data. This accepted student would be just one of 51 students with an SAT score below 900 in the class of fall 2022 at the university.

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New Cal State policy bans professors from showing Native American artifacts in class

The California State University system has rolled out a new policy that prohibits professors from using Native American “cultural items” in class – unless they obtain permission from the tribe.

The policy, announced last week, drew criticism from a California anthropologist who described it as an “attack” on the preservation of knowledge. However, a campus free speech attorney praised CSU for dropping a section of the policy that restricted free speech.

The 23-campus system has been working on the revised policy for several years in connection to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, and California’s state version. The laws require government and public entities to restore human remains and “cultural items” to their direct descendants.

The policy, published July 1, outlines the method by which universities must identify and repatriate these items to Native American tribes.

“All CSU campuses must implement processes that ensure timely, lawful repatriation of Human Remains and Cultural Items, including respectful treatment and handling while in CSU custody,” the policy states.

It also requires campuses to “respect Native American traditional knowledge and cultural protocols, ensuring that no decisions are made without meaningful Tribal consultation.”

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Anti White Legislation Proposed in California Taps University System For Verifying Student Reparations

According to Campus Reform, The California State University system “could soon be required to verify whether students descend from enslaved Americans under a bill advancing in the state legislature.”

The bill known as 437 advanced in the Senate authored by state Senator Akilah Weber directed CSU to establish a process by which genealogical eligibility for reparations could be verified.

The bill passed in the Senate and was now set for a hearing in the Assembly. As Campus Reform points out “while the bill does not mandate that CSU directly implement reparations screening, Weber’s office told Campus Reform that the university system would help develop methods the state could use to verify lineage.”

CSU as of now has not put out an official statement about these proposed reparations. S.B 437 is part of a full package of reparations-related legislation.

Sadly, California is not alone in their reparations as part of so called ‘higher education’. In 2022 Harvard pledged $100 million to a “Legacy of Slavery” fund.

This was not enough for Howard University’s Knight Chair of race and Journalism who argued this was insufficient and told The New York Times magazine “A true investment would be hundreds of millions more,”

This is proof yet again that the race hustlers will never be satisfied no matter what crazy initiatives liberal universities take.

Reparations are clearly a bad and fundamentally unjust idea.

Harvard like CSU is pandering and engaging in prejudiced behavior and yet despite this its still not enough for some.

Ultimately Americans overwhelmingly agree reparations are unfair and predjucial. This proposal would be cruel and unAmerican.

American universities must be purged of DEI and racial division.

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Germany: Muslim University Group Events Barred Amid Claims of Sex Segregation

A Muslim student organisation has been barred from holding any further events at Germany’s prestigious Charité University over accusations of segregating events by sex.

Medislam Collective, an Islamic student group, has been accused of violating the anti-discrimination policies of the Charité University of Medicine of Berlin after footage emerged of men and women being separated by their sex during a lecture.

The Medislam group had also reportedly held sex-specific events, including “Activity Day for Sisters” for female students and “Brothers Activity Day” for male students, Bild reported.

Other events included in-depth recitals of the Qur’an. It is currently unclear if the group mandated the segregation or if it was self-imposed by the students.

In a statement to the German paper, a Charité spokesman said that the university did not organise the previous events and that planned events have been barred during an official investigation.

“Based on the current indications and to ensure a non-discriminatory, inclusive and values-based Higher education space from now until further notice, and until further notice, the group will be prohibited from holding activities and events in the premises of the Charité,” the spokesman said.

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Did NYC’s Communist Mayoral Candidate Just Get Busted Peddling a Race Hoax?

It would be even more shocking if Zohran Mamdani weren’t abjectly insane. The hard left Democratic New York City mayoral candidate has an agenda that will essentially destroy the city, with actions to defund the police and install government-run grocery stores, to name a couple. He’s not a fan of Israel and is pretty much every horror you think of regarding the American Left. So, in keeping with that trend, are you shocked he tried to claim he was black when applying to Columbia University, because he did. Oh, I forgot—he also said he was Asian. Mamdani did not deny he did these things, and his explanation made for a good laugh.

As he runs for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani has made his identity as a Muslim immigrant of South Asian descent a key part of his appeal. 

But as a high school senior in 2009, Mr. Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, claimed another label when he applied to Columbia University. Asked to identify his race, he checked a box that he was “Asian” but also “Black or African American,” according to internal data derived from a hack of Columbia University that was shared with The New York Times. 

Columbia, like many elite universities, used a race-conscious affirmative action admissions program at the time. Reporting that his race was Black or African American in addition to Asian could have given an advantage to Mr. Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and spent his earliest years there. 

In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Mamdani, 33, said he did not consider himself either Black or African American, but rather “an American who was born in Africa.” He said his answers on the college application were an attempt to represent his complex background given the limited choices before him, not to gain an upper hand in the admissions process. (He was not accepted at Columbia.) 

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