Tag: universities

Pennsylvania Dem Threatens To Withhold Funding From University of Pittsburgh Over Conservative Speakers

A Pennsylvania lawmaker on Tuesday issued what free speech advocates are calling a veiled threat to withhold funding from the University of Pittsburgh over the school’s decision to allow several conservative speakers on campus.

During an appropriations hearing on university funding, Pennsylvania state representative La’Tasha Mayes (D.) demanded that Pitt disinvite Cabot Phillips, Riley Gaines, and Michael Knowles from upcoming campus events. All three speakers have a history of “targeting transgender students,” Mayes claimed—especially Knowles, whom she accused of saying that “transgender people should be eradicated.”

Mayes called on university chancellor Patrick Gallagher, who was at the hearing to request additional funding from the state, to “cancel the speakers who are coming to campus”—implying that she might vote against his request if he did not. Mayes did not respond to a request for comment.

The exchange alarmed Speech First, a legal nonprofit focused on First Amendment issues, which called Mayes’s remarks an “abuse of power.”

“The state is saying that if the university doesn’t violate its students’ First Amendment rights, then their funding could be at risk,” Cherise Trump, Speech First’s executive director, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Lawmakers shouldn’t be using veiled threats to hold funding over universities simply because they don’t like a person who was invited to speak.”

The shakedown highlights the growing willingness of progressive lawmakers to target offensive speech, in part by putting pressure on universities that permit it. In January 2022, for example, Democrats in both the Philadelphia City Council and the Pennsylvania State Senate urged the University of Pennsylvania to fire Amy Wax, the tenured law professor who has drawn fire for her views on race and immigration. Other Democrats, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Maryland senator Ben Cardin, have falsely claimed that “hate speech” is not protected by the First Amendment.

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Yes, Leftism Is a Religion: University Gives Greta Thunberg an Honorary Doctorate in Theology

For the Left, it works both ways. Last year, woke students at Duke Divinity School proclaimed that “God is queer,” and for Leftists, the reverse is also true: “queerness,” along with the rest of the Left’s agenda, including climate hysteria, the vaccines, race obsessions, and every other aspect of the Left’s obsessions, are for them a god. Leftism today is a religion, a sad and tatty substitute for genuine religion, but a religion nonetheless, an all-consuming preoccupation and a prism through which the devotee sees and understands all things. The University of Helsinki confirmed this anew on Monday by announcing that it was giving climate hysteric Greta Thunberg an honorary doctorate…in theology. As David Strom said over at HotAir, “Climate Change is a religion. We all know that.” Yes, and it’s just part of the Left’s worship.

Now, once one accepts the Greta mythology, the idea of her getting an honorary doctorate is not much of a step beyond what the believer has already swallowed. If someone actually thinks that Greta Thunberg is a precocious child who has been speaking her own thoughts and giving her own opinions, and that she actually has something of substance to contribute to the pressing issues of the day, then it’s no problem at all for a university to give her some kind of honorary degree in The Science™. Give her a degree in “climate science” or “atmospheric studies” or something. But instead, the wise Finns decided to give Greta a theology degree, and that’s telling. It’s out in the open now. At least at the University of Helsinki, they don’t seem to care if people realize that the Left is not about rationality and logical thought, but about false gods of their own imagining.

Nor are the solons of the University of Helsinki by any means the first Leftists to make a religion out of their delusions. Former (haha) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Smirnoff) back in 2021 gave thanks to her god for his salvific sacrifice. No, not Jesus, silly. Did you really fall for that business about her being a Catholic? No, Pelosi prayed to her real savior: “Thank you, George Floyd, for sacrificing your life for justice.” A few months after that, Catholic University joined the cult by displayed a painting of George Floyd as Jesus.

Like climate change, George Floyd worship is just one aspect of the Left’s religion. New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D-Planned Parenthood) revealed in September 2021 that the COVID vaccines were a kind of sacrament: “I prayed a lot to God during this time, and you know what – God did answer our prayers. He made the smartest men and women, the scientists, the doctors, the researchers – he made them come up with a vaccine. That is from God to us and we must say, thank you, God. Thank you. And I wear my ‘vaccinated’ necklace all the time to say I’m vaccinated. All of you, yes, I know you’re vaccinated, you’re the smart ones, but you know there’s people out there who aren’t listening to God and what God wants.”

Leading the applause for the newly minted Doctor Greta, the high priestess of the climate change cult, will be the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which even has a hymn for its climate change worship: “The Climate is Changing.” It’s about as cheerful as you might think: “The climate is changing! Creation cries out! / Your people face flooding and fire and drought.” Inspiring! Not to be outdone, climate idolaters at Union Theological Seminary have begun worshipping potted plants as a “liturgical response to our climate crisis.”

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Stanford University Accused of Racial Engineering, Reducing Number of White Students

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. This is the end product of the left’s obsession with equity.

The Stanford Review reports:

Stanford’s Racial Engineering

Stanford’s enrollment rate for white students in the Class of 2026 was 22%, a drop from 40% for the Class of 2016 just ten years ago. While Stanford claims that “the University does not use quotas of any kind in its admission process,” a further exploration of Stanford’s enrollment statistics by the Review reveals that the university has seemingly taken part in racial engineering over the past several years—practically exchanging white applicants for Asian applicants while holding other racial group enrollment rates constant.

Over an eleven-year period, the data demonstrates that Stanford has decreased enrollment of its white students by approximately 15% and increased the enrollment of its Asian students by about 10%. All other racial groups, however, have remained roughly the same.

In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke that racial quotas were unconstitutional. Stanford claims to comply with Bakke, but the data points to a different story. Black and Hispanic enrollment rates for the Class of 2026 vary only by 0.76% and 0.44% from their enrollment rates for the Class of 2015, respectively. Whites and Asians in the Class of 2026, however, vary by 12.35% and 8.37% from their enrollment rates over a decade ago in the Class of 2015.

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Memes tools of terrorism: University of Nebraska-Omaha leads international discussion

Those viral online imitations — memes, as they’re called — can be more than just funny or annoying.

They can be terrorizing.

“A click, a save, a retweet…yeah, a like, that was one of the techniques we learned about today in the panel,” said Gina Ligon, director of the National Counterterrorism, Innovation, Technology and Education Center (NCITE). “Even liking them can alert a terrorist you’re sympathetic to their ideals.”

She’s referring to Thursday’s international panel discussing terrorists’ use of memes. More than 200 government officials and members of the public joined online.

“I first started studying them when ISIS was using them to recruit English speakers,” Ligon said. “They would do memes with ISIS fighters with kittens, and they would spread like wildfire online because they were so desperate to have a kitten with an ISIS fighter…and now, one of the reasons we held this, after the Buffalo attack this summer…that shooter had a ton of memes in his [posts].”

“We’re not just concerned about violent memes, we’re concerned about how violent memes might impact as violence in real life,” said NCITE researcher and panelist Kat Parsons.

Parsons is one of more than 50 NCITE researchers at universities across the nation. She shared some of her current studies into how memes can be used to spread violent beliefs. She was joined on the online panel by Oliver Goodman of U-K- based Moonshot, which “works to develop technologies and methodologies to expose threats, disrupt malicious actors, and protect vulnerable audiences online” as well as Arthur Bradley, the open source intelligence manager at Tech Against Terrorism.

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Stanford professor blasts woke tattle-tale software which lets students anonymously report one another for discrimination, including boy spotted reading Mein Kampf: Creators live in $900k mansion and own VINEYARD

A group of Stanford professors are fighting back against a woke tattle-tale tool that lets students anonymously report each other for discrimination.

More than 75 professors argue in a petition to school administrators that the online tool threatens free speech on campus, with one telling the Wall Street Journal it reminded him of systems in place in the Soviet Union and China. 

The Maxient reporting system, employed at 1,300 institutions around the country, has already been challenged by free speech advocates in Florida, Texas, Michigan and Oklahoma.

It has apparently made Aaron Hark, 42, a millionaire, owning a $900,000 dollar home in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his family’s own vineyard. 

Hark set up the firm with wife Celeste, 41, with the pair now enjoying the fruits of their woke online hall monitor software in more ways than one. 

Back at Stanford, school administrators say the system is necessary to ensure a respectful campus, despite criticism that it is creepy and Orwellian. 

The school has been using the third-party system since 2021, when it became widely used at universities across the country for students to report their colleagues who were not wearing masks. 

But university professors said they did not know of the system, run by third-party contractor Maxient, until the school newspaper reported on an incident in which a student was reported for reading Mein Kampf.

‘I was stunned,’ Russell Berman, a professor of comparative literature who created the petition, told the Journal. ‘It reminds me of McCarthyism.’

According to the company’s website, Maxient is the ‘software of choice for managing behavior records at colleges and universities across North America.

‘Our centralized reporting and record-keeping helps institutions connect the dots and prevent students from falling through the cracks,’ it says, noting: ‘Maxient serves as an integral component of many schools overall early alert efforts, helping to identify students in distress and coordinate the efforts of various departments to provide follow-up.’ 

Maxient was founded in 2003 and is now being used at more than 1,300 institutions across the United States.

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‘The Only Solution:’ Yale Prof Suggests Mass Suicide for Elderly in Japan

Yale University professor Yusuke Narita is suggesting mass suicide for elderly people in Japan, according to a report by the New York Times. The professor is now backtracking, claiming that his in-depth discussion of mass suicide is “an abstract metaphor.”

“I feel like the only solution is pretty clear,” Narita, an assistant professor of economics at Yale. “In the end, isn’t it mass suicide and mass ‘seppuku’ of the elderly?”

Seppuku refers to “an act of ritual disembowelment,” noted the New York Times, which also described the Yale professor as an individual who has “taken on the question of how to deal with the burdens of Japan’s rapidly aging society.”

Last year, after being asked to elaborate on his mass suicide ideas, Narita suggested it could be a “good thing” to “work hard toward creating a society” like the one depicted in the 2019 horror film Midsommar, in which a Swedish cult has elderly members of its community commit suicide by jumping off a cliff.

“Whether that’s a good thing or not, that’s a more difficult question to answer,” the Ivy League professor said. “So if you think that’s good, then maybe you can work hard toward creating a society like that.”

When it comes to euthanasia, Narita has suggested “the possibility of making it mandatory in the future.”

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Systemic Racism Makes Animals Abandon Black Neighborhoods, Researchers Say

White neighborhoods have greater abundance and diversity of animal life, and Canadian researchers say racism is to blame. 

“Systemic racism alters the demography of urban wildlife populations in ways that generally limit population sizes and negatively affect their chances of persistence,” write the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg’s Chloé Schmidt and Colin J. Garroway in a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  

In a study that examined 39 terrestrial vertebrate species in 268 urban locations across the United States, the researchers found “generally consistent patterns of reduced genetic diversity and decreased connectivity in neighborhoods with fewer White residents.” 

Schmidt and Garroway say racial segregation practices during the 1950s suburb boom played a major role, as they blocked racial and ethnic minorities from more desirable neighborhoods. This had the effect of sending white families in to the suburbs and concentrating blacks and other minorities in urban cores that grew increasingly dense. The effect was compounded by physical barriers, such as railroad tracks and highways.   

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Mystery Surrounds Sudden Firing Of Notable Archaeologist. What Was He Digging Up?

World-renowned archeologist and university professor David Keller was mysteriously released from his job in December, and no one will go on record to say why.

Keller, 52, is best known as an award-winning author and intrepid researcher of human history and for bringing grants to his former employer of 21 years, the Center for Big Bend Studies at Sul Ross State University, according to a report from mid-2022. Keller was fired from his position at the school despite being in the throes of research.

“It was humiliating and sad and infuriating all at the same time,” Keller told Texas Monthly following his firing. “That was my career, my livelihood, and much of my identity. To fire me in such a swift and cavalier manner felt very unfair considering my time there.” Keller said he planned to retire in five years anyway and was in the middle of three major projects for the institution.

According to Keller, the school told him, “We’re not going to tell you why, and we appreciate your service, and you need to pick up your stuff and go.” He further claimed that the school told him the decision had something to do with his work at Big Bend National Park, where Keller’s permit was suspended in December.

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University Tells Women Not to Call Police on Sex Offender Migrant Because It’s Racist

A university in Berlin told women being repeatedly harassed by a sex offender migrant male not to call the police as it may be seen as racist.

The suspect has been sexually harassing female students for weeks around campus at Berlin’s Free University, but the left-wing General Students’ Committee (AStA) has urged them not to alert authorities.

The Morgenpost newspaper reported on an email sent out to students by the group which said women should be wary of appearing racist and putting the sex offender at risk.

“We would like to point out that police operations for people affected by racism are generally associated with an increased risk of experiencing police violence,” the email stated, adding that most police officers are “not sufficiently trained in dealing with psychologically exceptional situations.”

“Therefore such engagements often ‘by unnecessary use of force are escalated.’” the statement added.

Morgenpost reported that the university’s email indicated, “the concern here is obviously less for the potential victim than for the perpetrator.”

Instead of calling the police, the letter says students should instead contact the security service of the university or the social psychiatric service.

“However, the latter can only apprehend an individual with their consent and thus is an unhelpful suggestion,” reports Remix News.

“Despite an intervention, the sex offender appears to resist any attempts to change his ways. Apparently, there was at least one conversation between students and the alleged sex offender, but he has shown no willingness to stop harassing women.”

Berlin police responded to the story by urging women to call them if they felt unsafe.

“Anyone who is in danger or affected by a crime or becomes aware of an emergency situation of others should not let anything or anyone stop them from acting. Call us – dial 110! We are here for you,” the police department tweeted.

Such behavior is nothing new in Germany, which has accepted millions of migrants, the vast majority of them young men, from the Middle East and North Africa over the last decade.

After the mass molestation of women in Cologne by migrant men on New Year’s Eve 2015, the local feminist group infamously responded by visiting the city’s migrant center and handing out flowers to asylum seekers.

Berlin was also hit by a wave of unrest on December 31st last year, although outside of the city itself the media barely covered the story.

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University Removes Slave-Owning Benefactor’s Name, His Family Demands Their $51 Million Back

If your name isn’t good enough for a college, is your money? Such a question has been raised over a now-deleted donator in Virginia.

The situation dates back to 1846, when a man named Thomas C. Williams attended Richmond College. In the 1880s, he served as a trustee.

More from the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

After his death, his family made a gift to [the college] that helped establish the law school. When Richmond College became the University of Richmond in 1920, it began referring to the law school as the T.C. Williams School of Law.

That was then, this is now. In September of 2022, the University of Richmond board voted unanimously to change the name to the University of Richmond School of Law.

At the time, President Kevin Hallock and the board issued a letter:

We recognize that some may be disappointed or disagree with this decision. We also recognize the role the Williams family has played here and respect the full and complete history of the institution.

He may have played an important part, but according to tax records, T.C.’s successful tobacco business owned 25 to 40 slaves.

Six months before T.C.’s booting, half a dozen campus buildings were re-labeled. Gone were references to those who’d possessed slaves — including Robert Ryland, the school’s first president in 1840.

On March 26th, a new policy was instated:

No building, program, professorship, or other entity at the University should be named for a person who directly engaged in the trafficking and/or enslavement of others or openly advocated for the enslavement of people.

Out with the old, in with the new. But T.C.’s family wants their man’s old money back: If he’s unworthy of recognition for his efforts, they figure, his cash should be no good as well.

T.C.’s great-great-grandson explained in a letter to the president.

If suddenly his name is not good enough for the University, then isn’t the proper ethical and, indeed, virtuous action to return the benefactor’s money with interest? … [I]s it not a form of fraud to induce money from a benefactor, and then discredit the benefactor after he is long dead? Surely the Williams family would not have given a penny to the University knowing that the University would later dishonor the family.

It was a might more than a penny; Rob has done the math:

At a six-percent compounded interest over 132 years, [T.C.’s] gift to the law school alone is now valued at over $51 million, and this does not include many other substantial gifts from my family to the University.

Bottom line:

The ethical and virtuous decision is clear. Return the money.

Rob told The College Fix his family has sent President Kevin “20 (unreturned) emails asking for the evidence” regarding their ancestor’s slavery connection.

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