The oldest scholarly group studying U.S. history and culture is getting sued for “covertly pack[ing]” its organization with anti-Israel professors.
Before 2012, no candidate chosen to head the American Studies Association had been associated with the Israeli boycott movement, according to The College Fix. For the past five years, ALL nominees were vocal supporters of the movement.
Some of the defendants in the case have a well-documented history of anti-Israel remarks. One of them, Steven Salaita, had a job offer rescinded after the discovery of these tweets:
“Zionists, take responsibility: if your dream of an ethnocratic Israel is worth the murder of children, just f***ing own it already,” said the professor. In another tweet, Salaita said “at this point, if Netanyahu appeared on TV with a necklace made from the teeth of Palestinian children, would anybody be surprised?
Salaita sued the University of Illinois for retracting his job offer, getting $600,000 out of the settlement.
Another defendant, Rutgers University women’s studies professor Jasbir Puar, is accused of making sure that “only signed supporters of USACBI [which advocates for both the academic and cultural boycott of Israel] were nominated for American Studies Association President.”
Alex Lubin, an American University professor whom Puar nominated for ASA’s national council, apparently wrote in one of the released emails that “we were nominated in order to build momentum for BDS even though the question of BDS in American Studies Association may or may not emerge while we’re on the council.”
Puar accused Israel of committing “field assassinations of young Palestinian men,” and then invoked the anti-Semitic trope that “the bodies were mined for organs for scientific research.”
But not every ASA member knew about the collusion between the group and the anti-Israel lobby. Puar allegedly kept it hidden from the organization’s general membership. John Stephens, executive director of the ASA, denied knowing about it, but then did a simple Internet search and discovered for himself that the names on an anti-Israel boycott proposal matched up with the names of several ASA officers who passed the group’s 2013 boycott of all Israeli schools, which ⅔ of the ASA’s voting members approved.
But the ASA did receive backlash for this decision. In just a month, over 80 US colleges condemned the vote and several colleges withdrew from the organization entirely. Israel does not seem to be the only issue on which the ASA is biased. Its current president, Kandice Chuh, “teaches courses in critical theory, aesthetics, race and intersectionality, queer theory, and decolonial studies,” subjects typically associated with the political left. Elizabeth Duggan and David Roediger, ASA presidents from 2014 to 2016, are apparently interested in and/or have authored books on “whiteness.”
From the Founding Fathers to John Locke and Voltaire, it would be really hard to have an honest discussion about American political thought without reading the works of white men. But that’s exactly what the University of Colorado, Denver is doing with its “American Political Thought” course.
The syllabus says “Rather than surveying traditional figures of American political thought, it attends to historically marginalized voices at the crossings of race, gender, sexuality, and nation,” according to The College Fix. Right below is a picture of a “Make America Great Again” slogan with the “great” part obliterated.
Alright so this really is just simple demographics here. America is a majority-white nation. America was even more of a majority-white nation at the time of its founding. So using your basic deduction skills, which I would really hope you have if you’re the professor teaching this course, you should be able to easily arrive at the conclusion that, yeah, most of the political theory is going to come from whites. Now it’s no shock to see some really zany elective courses offered at schools these days, but this “American Political Thought” course is one of the few classes that can be taken to fulfill a degree requirement for political science majors at CU Denver.
Let’s also take a look at some of the imagery this professor, Chad Shomura, uses in the course syllabus. We showed you the damaged MAGA sign, but then there’s also one of some object blocking a white guy in a chair, another with the red stripes of the American flag mixed with bloody nooses, and then this picture of something called “Demoncracy” with what looks to be two kissing half-human half-horses.
Forget teaching Colorado’s aspiring politicians and think tank leaders — this guy might just need an exorcism.
UC Davis Professor Joshua Clover has said “I am thankful that every living cop will one day be dead, some by their own hand, some by others, too many of old age #letsnotmakemore,” “I mean, it’s easier to shoot cops when their backs are turned, no?” and “People think that cops need to be reformed. They need to be killed,” reported Campus Reform.
Now, I think that most people would agree that saying you’re thankful for cops dying is rude, but not illegal. I’m no legal expert, but saying “they need to be killed” just might cross into incitement to violence and I think you’d be hard-pressed to count that as some kind of scholarly “academic freedom.”
Anyway, California Assemblyman James Gallagher and Ron Lawrence, a local police chief, teamed up to send around 10,000 petitions to the University of California chancellor’s office to try to get Joshua Clover fired.
Now I’m pretty much a free speech absolutist, so while this guy’s comments are outrageous, that’s not actually the most compelling argument for me for why he should be fired. Imagine Joshua advocating for the death of pretty much any other group: women, gay people, Muslims, Jews — he’d be out of that cushy job in a flash. But nowadays there are a few groups like police officers, men (if you remember this HuffPo staffer’s tweet), and whites (if you recall this University of Georgia TA’s remarks about “fighting white people is a skill” and “some white people may have to die”)…it’s somehow acceptable to make these kinds of statements about these groups but not others.
The University of Arizona held a career day last week and the school’s Criminal Justice Association had the audacity to invite two Border Patrol agents, according to Campus Reform. That didn’t sit so well with Denisse Moreno Melchor, a UA student who harassing the Border Patrol agents during their presentation and followed them all the way to their car.
The University of Arizona’s student government released a letter, calling the Border Patrol’s visit “immensely harmful to our DACA and undocumented community,” demanding that the officers announce future visits, and saying “it is also necessary to understand the mere presence of USBP on campus creates an environment which negatively impacts our DACA and undocumented community.”
In what kind of world can you demand to know when law enforcement is going to be around? Just think about how entitled that sounds. “I am going to go 30 miles per hour over the speed limit on my way to work and I demand to be provided every morning with a map detailing the locations of all of the cops on duty.”
I mean, come on. But you know, the really ironic part about this whole fiasco is that the students seem to be ascribing a power to Border Patrol that the agents don’t actually have. Art del Cueto, VP of the National Border Patrol Council, called the student government letter “ignorant” and said “we can’t arrest the DACA students as agents. We can’t send them back unless obviously they commit some kind of crime other than being here illegally. They are a protected class right now so it is ridiculous.”
We’re dealing with people who don’t just hate the Border Patrol, but also the police, and probably the whole concept of America staying a nation with borders and law and order. If you think appeasement or a compromise, some kind of deal or middle ground, will be acceptable to these guys, you’ve got another think coming. Alright, that’s your black pill for the day.