Tag: universities

Five and Dive—Low Expectations Plague The Air Force Academy

During their final year at the Air Force Academy (AFA), cadets choose the specific jobs they will be assigned while on active duty.  This crucial decision, made in the nascence of one’s career, has far reaching implications with regard to career advancement.  The Air Force Specialty Code (AFSC) links available jobs with an alphanumeric designation, and not surprisingly, pilot training represents the most popular AFSC for graduating cadets at the AFA.  But the second choice is astonishing for cadets who have received a four year education worth $416,000 at an institution that is tasked to train career Air Force officers.

The minimum commitment for an AFA education is five years of active duty service, and the AFSCs that obligate cadets for the least amount of payback time represent the second most popular job selections in the aggregate.  The act is known among cadets as “five and dive,” and it is borne of disillusionment and the realization that DEI entrenched military leadership, quota-based promotions, and falling standards are not what they signed up for. 

DEI’s nonsensical, unsupported claims that phenotype and sexual identity are indispensable components of superior military performance and the intimidating effect of DEI political officers embedded within the cadet wing breed cynicism and psychological fatigue. Recent undercover investigative reporting that exposes blatant corruption within Air Force DEI programs and an admission of DEI’s lack of benefit, affirms the negative view of DEI held by most cadets. If the real Air Force is at all similar to the academy experience, then why devote a career to an organization with priorities more in line with Cloward-Piven than the Constitution?

The AFA entices prospective cadets by falsely claiming that they will be challenged to the full extent of their abilities.  Those times are gone, and to revisit them, one must return to the academy’s early years.  The performative expectations of academy administrators and their political enablers have fallen precipitously—a disappointment for patriotic men and women, who do not expect, nor bargain for an Ivy League attitude at a U.S. military academy. 

The 4th class system at the AFA essentially no longer exists.  During basic summer training, upper class instructors cannot raise their voices, and safe spaces are available for those sensitive personalities bearing the brunt of criticism. Basic cadets are limited to performing three pushups if commanded by an upper classmen.  Summer training concludes with Hell Day, which lasts only hours, after which time members of the fourth class are allowed to function at ease for the remainder of their time at the academy.   Ask contemporary commanding officers to defend training that minimizes psychological and physical hardship, and they will respond in unison of their commitment to train “warfighters.” 

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Students Sue Indiana University Over “Bias Incident” Reporting System

Following our recent reporting about the rise of “bias incident” reporting systems on college campuses, threatening free speech, Speech First has filed a lawsuit against Indiana University and several of its officials, challenging the university’s bias incidents policy. The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, alleges that the policy infringes on students’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.

Speech First, a nationwide membership organization dedicated to preserving civil rights and free speech, claims that Indiana University’s “bias incident” policy stifles open discourse and chills protected speech. The policy defines a bias incident as “any conduct, speech, or expression, motivated in whole or in part by bias or prejudice meant to intimidate, demean, mock, degrade, marginalize, or threaten individuals or groups based on that individual or group’s actual or perceived identities.”

According to the complaint, this broad and vague definition allows the university to police a wide range of speech, deterring students from expressing controversial or unpopular opinions. The policy’s enforcement mechanisms include tracking and logging incidents, investigating reports, and potentially referring students for disciplinary action.

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No diploma: Colleges withhold degrees from students after pro-Palestinian protests

Graduation is an important moment for many Americans. More than just pomp and circumstance, the ceremonies mark when students are handed the most coveted testimonial in academic life: A diploma.

But for some college students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests, campus activism has cost them their degrees – at least for a while.

“Four years and just a criminal record, nothing else,” said Youssef Hasweh, one of four students at the University of Chicago who have had their degrees withheld pending an investigation into a protest encampment. “A decade of (high school and college) work down the toilet because I decided to express my free speech.”

Students being denied conferment – some of whom have faced arrests, expulsions, suspensions and other disciplinary action – say they’re in limbo and are being made into examples. As they await appeals processes and the results of university investigations, they’re preparing for an uncertain future. In the worst-case scenario, they’ll be saddled with debt and will have no degree to show for it.

But while the stakes are high, they told USA TODAY that none of them regret their part in campus protests over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

“I have these punishments and have to work through this stress, but it’s incomparable to the plight of Palestinians,” said Devron Burks, a Vanderbilt student who was arrested and expelled following the occupation of a campus building. “I don’t regret it, and I don’t think I ever will.”

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‘A Failed Medical School’: How Racial Preferences, Supposedly Outlawed in California, Have Persisted at UCLA

Long considered one of the best medical schools in the world, the University of California, Los Angeles’s David Geffen School of Medicine receives as many as 14,000 applications a year. Of those, it accepted just 173 students in the 2023 admissions cycle, a record-low acceptance rate of 1.3 percent. The median matriculant took difficult science courses in college, earned a 3.8 GPA, and scored in the 88th percentile on the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT).

Without those stellar stats, some doctors at the school say, students can struggle to keep pace with the demanding curriculum.

So when it came time for the admissions committee to consider one such student in November 2021—a black applicant with grades and test scores far below the UCLA average—some members of the committee felt that this particular candidate, based on the available evidence, was not the best fit for the top-tier medical school, according to two people present for the committee’s meeting.

Their reservations were not well-received.

When an admissions officer voiced concern about the candidate, the two people said, the dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, exploded in anger.

“Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?” Lucero asked the admissions officer, these people said. The candidate’s scores shouldn’t matter, she continued, because “we need people like this in the medical school.”

Even before the Supreme Court’s landmark affirmative action ban last year, public schools in California were barred by state law from considering race in admissions. The outburst from Lucero, who discussed race explicitly despite that ban, unsettled some admissions officers, one of whom reached out to other committee members in the wake of the incident. “We are not consistent in the way we apply the metrics to these applicants,” the official wrote in an email obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. “This is troubling.”

“I wondered,” the official added, “if this applicant had been [a] white male, or [an] Asian female for that matter, [whether] we would have had that much discussion.”

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Disgraced Professor Sentenced for Action That Could Have Trapped Firefighters in Deadly Blaze

A former college lecturer on “criminal justice issues” is going to get some first-hand experience in the subject after he was sentenced to spend five years and three months in prison on Thursday.

Gary Stephen Maynard had pleaded guilty in January to starting a number of fires in California that could have had much more disastrous results than they did.

Maynard, 49, had formerly lectured at Santa Clara University and Sonoma State University, KCRA reported.

The former lecturer admitted to starting at least four fires in July and August of 2021, according to a Justice Department news release, and pleaded guilty to three counts of arson.

One count of arson was dismissed as part of a plea agreement, according to court records cited by The New York Times.

Maynard was charged with starting fires behind firefighters who were working to contain the Dixie Fire, which eventually destroyed more than 1,000 homes and spread over 1,500 square miles, according to KCRA.

“He intentionally made a dangerous situation more perilous by setting some of his fires behind the men and women fighting the Dixie fire, potentially cutting off any chance of escape,” Phillip A. Talbert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, said in a statement (available in full below).

It eventually grew to become the second-largest fire in California history, according to the outlet.

“Maynard faced the possibility of up to 20 years in prison and a $750,000 fine,” KCRA reported. “Besides the prison sentence of more than five years, he was ordered to pay $13,081 in restitution.”

His attorney argued that Maynard was “suffering from untreated and significant mental health issues when he set the fires and has sought treatment since then,” according to Fox News.

“A Santa Clara University colleague of Mr. Maynard, who was not identified, told the police in October 2020 that Mr. Maynard was struggling with anxiety, depression, split personality, and wanted to kill himself, the complaint said,” according to The Times.

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Congress Trains Academia to Deny Genocide

“Do you think Israel’s government is genocidal?”

That’s the question that Rep. Bob Good, a Republican of Virginia, fired at Jonathan Holloway, president of Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey, last week in a U.S. House committee hearing.

Holloway, a scholar of African American history who has been steadily climbing the ladder of administrative positions at top-tier schools, looked stunned.

“Um sir, I don’t … have an opinion on Israel’s um …in terms of that phrase.”

Good: “You do not have an opinion as to whether Israel’s government is genocidal?”

Holloway: “Uh, no sir, I think Israel has a right to exist and protect itself.”

Good: “Do you think Israel’s government is genocidal?”

Holloway: “I think Israel has a right to exist and protect itself, sir.”

Good: “But you will not say Israel’s government is not genocidal. You can’t say that?”

Holloway stuck to his script: “Sir I believe in the government’s right…”

Good, cut him off: “You can’t be that surprised by the topic of the discussion today and you can’t say that Israel’s government is not genocidal. That’s interesting.”

Good has a point.

It is hard to believe that Holloway, or anyone following world events in the slightest for that matter, would not have formed an opinion on whether the Israeli government is committing a genocide.

While Good was trying to wring a “no” out of Holloway, the correct answer for a university president, as a representative of the domain of knowledge, would undoubtedly have been “yes.” 

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University of Colorado Vaccine Mandate “Motivated by Religious Animus” and “Unconstitutional”

The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit issued a ruling that the University of Colorado Anschutz School Medicine’s refusal to allow religious exemptions to its COVID-19 vaccine mandate was “motivated by religious animus” and unconstitutional under the First Amendment’s Religious Clauses.

The Court ruled that the University’s vaccine mandates granted “exemptions for some religions, but not others, because of differences in their religious doctrines” and granted “secular exemptions on more favorable terms than religious exemptions.” Both of these things were illegal.

The Court reaffirmed the First Amendment principle that government cannot test the sincerity of employees’ religious beliefs.

The University’s mandates violated “clearly established” constitutional rights, the court held.

The 55-page ruling, issued on 7 May, was a reversal of a previous lower-court decision.

The appeal was filed in March 2022 by the Thomas More Society on behalf of 17 faculty and students who claimed that the university refused to respect their religious objections to taking the vaccine.

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UCLA attackers exposed: meet the violent Zionist agitators LA police haven’t arrested

The Grayzone has obtained a dossier detailing the identities of the Zionist hooligans who assaulted UCLA anti-genocide student protesters. It was sent to LA police, but no arrests have been made. And the cops still can’t explain why they disappeared for hours during the mob attack.

On April 30, thirty people were injured when a mob of Zionist hooligans savagely assaulted the pro-Palestine UCLA encampment shortly before midnight. For over three hours, local and campus police stood down as the masked thugs assaulted students, journalists, and even officers of the law with fireworks volleys, pepper spray, and metal pipes. Though multiple attackers have been identified by community members on social media, to date there have been no arrests of pro-Israel goons.

The Grayzone has obtained a dossier composed by anonymous sleuths claiming involvement with the UCLA student protests which apparently identifies some of the attack’s perpetrators. The students emailed the document to the UCLA administration and police (UCPD), as well as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. It contains detailed information about the identities of those who were filmed carrying out wanton violence.

Los Angeles-area police have arrested droves of students protesting Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza, accusing over 40 students and journalists of “conspiracy to commit burglary” for attempting a sit-in on school grounds. Yet local authorities have made a grand total of zero arrests in the coordinated Zionist mob assault against UCLA anti-genocide protesters on April 30. 

The LA Times has reported that local law enforcement is relying on sophisticated facial recognition technology to hunt down the attackers. But as the UCLA sleuths’ dossier makes clear, many assailants have already been identified by matching their identities with social media profiles.

The UCPD and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department did not respond to questions from The Grayzone about whether the persons identified in the dossier were under investigation, or had been taken into custody.

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New Columbia Wrinkle: Police Takedown Facilitated By Faculty Member Who Serves On NYPD Anti-Terror Squad…Conspiracists Cry Foul

The recent ousting of students and professional agitators from a Columbia University building was led in part by a Columbia adjunct professor who is also the civilian Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism for the NYPD.

The story is from The Grayzone, a media project headed by Max Blumenthal, Jewish blogger and former Clinton aide. That said, the article is written with a decidedly pro-Palestine bent. Author Wyatt Reed describes the Columbia uprising as a “protest model [that] has since spread to over 100 other universities in the US, and even been taken up abroad, with similar actions occurring at Leeds University in the UK and the Sorbonne in Paris”, as if it were organic, and not, in fact, funded by groups such as the Soros-backed U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR).

Still, Reed injects some salient points into the Columbia conversation. He correctly notes that, “During the NYPD’s triumphant May 1 post-raid press conference, Weiner blamed ‘outside agitators’ for triggering the military-style police crackdown at Columbia. However, she refused to name the outsiders supposedly on the scene.”

Next, Reed asserts that Weiner falsely used the terroristic past of an elderly Columbia encampment visitor–Nahla al-Arian, 63, as preface for police intevention:

“…a brief visit to Columbia by Nahla Al-Arian, who Weiner incorrectly described as ‘the wife of somebody who had been convicted for material support to terrorism.’

‘That’s not somebody who I would want necessarily influencing my child if I were a parent of somebody at Columbia,’ Weiner commented.

Nahla’s husband, Palestinian academic Sami Al-Arian, had been indicted on flimsy terrorism charges in 2003, but a jury refused to convict him. Nevertheless, her brief stop at the Columbia encampment — where she says she did not even interact with any demonstrators — was cited by Adams during three separate media engagements to justify the police repression.”

–Ibid., editorial emphasis.

Further, Reed points out, somewhat ominously, that Weiner is the granddaughter of one of the creators of the hydrogen bomb:

“Weiner is the granddaughter of Stanislaw Ulam, the Polish Jewish mathematician who helped conceive the hydrogen bomb as part of the Manhattan Project. “I’m very proud of that legacy,” Weiner said of her grandfather’s work upon being appointed as NYPD intelligence chief.“

–Ibid.

Reed stops short of calling Weiner a Mossad asset, but he sets the table elaborately, stopping just short of lighting the dinner candles:

“The NYPD’s Counterterrorism Bureau currently maintains an office in Tel Aviv, Israel, where it coordinates with Israel’s security apparatus and maintains a department liaison. Weiner appears to serve as a bridge between the Bureau’s offices in Israel and New York.

A 2011 AP investigation revealed that a so-called ‘Demographics Unit’ operated secretly within the NYPD’s Counterterrorism and Intelligence Bureau. This shadowy outfit spied on Muslims around the New York City area, and even on students at campuses outside the state who were involved in Palestine solidarity activism. The unit was developed in tandem with the CIA, which has refused to name the former Middle East station chief it posted in the senior ranks of the NYPD’s intelligence division. 

The ‘Demographics Unit’ appears to have been inspired by Israeli intelligence as well. As a former police official told the AP, the unit attempted to ‘map the city’s human terrain’ through a program ‘modeled in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank.‘”

–Ibid., editorial emphasis.

To sum up: Rebecca Weiner is, plainly, a liaison between the NYPD and Columbia University. The police division she works for was formed as a response to 9/11, and was done so with Israeli intelligence guidance, as would seem a natural fit for a country that has dealt with Middle East terrorism for decades.

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George H.W. Bush’s Alma Mater Throwing A Beach Party For People Of Color Only — White Students Appear To Be Excluded

Oops, they did it again!

This is not the first time that the elite private day school in Greenwich, CT, has scheduled an event for people of color only.

The last time Greenwich Country Day School (GCDS) tried to hold an event that excluded white students the story became national news after the Greenwich Republican Town Committee posted the GCDS letter on X. The effort was unsurprisingly organized by the school’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

“The annual Cider and Donuts event is open to GCDS families who identify as Black, Asian, Latinx, multi-racial, Indigenous, Middle Eastern, and/or people of color,” read the announcement which listed nearly every group, except white students.

Eventually the school capitulated and opened the event to any interested students.

But that’s not stopping GCDS from trying to hold another event that appears to exclude white students, this time it’s the “POC Beach Party”.

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