Last week, I reported on how police were called when pro-Palestinian protesters crashed a panel featuring reserve officers from the Israeli Defense Force. Now a Jewish student group at the same school has gotten denied membership of a minority rights group because of its association with Israel, according to The Cavalier Daily.
The University of Virginia has an organization called the Minority Rights Coalition which, as you might expect, is a kind of almighty behemoth representing all of the various marginalized groups on campus. The Minority Rights Coalition speaks for constituent groups representing black students, Muslims, Asians — who are overrepresented at UVA and many other elite colleges — Native Americans, “queer” students, feminists, and even “Latinx” students, which is apparently the gender-neutral term for Latinos.
The MRC rejected the Jewish Leadership Council’s application for membership because one of the Jewish students’ five groups was Hoos for Israel, a group which aims to teach the UVA community about the culture, history, and politics of Israel.
The MRC said “Many students under the [Minority Rights Coalition] umbrella believed at the time that [Hoos for Israel] operated in a way which made these students feel concerned and unsettled.”
Meanwhile, the Jewish Leadership Council said “We recognize that the Israel-Palestine Conflict is complicated and heavily debated, and that it carries the weight of lived experiences and deep set emotions for many individuals – both in the Jewish community and in the communities represented in the MRC. We deeply understand the need for dialogue surrounding this complex issue, but at the same time we cannot and will not apologize for our right to support a Jewish homeland.”
Now the MRC is apparently going to reconsider the Jewish Leadership Council for membership, but my question is: why bother? If the cabal of social justice-themed members hadn’t tipped them off in the first place, the Jewish students’ initial rejection should prove to them that the Minority Rights Coalition is a group concerned not with the marginalization of minorities, but merely with the marginalization of minorities that hold the correct opinions.
Jefferson’s birthday falls on April 13 and, up until now, Charlottesville has designated the nearest working day a paid holiday. But all that might change if city Mayor Nikuyah Walker gets her way, according to Campus Reform. The mayor suggested ditching Jefferson’s birthday as a paid holiday in exchange for Liberation and Freedom Day, which celebrates Charlottesville’s emancipation of slaves.
Walker didn’t really expand on the suggestion, but a little more vocal was city Councilor Wes Bellamy. You know, the Wes Bellamy who used to serve as vice mayor and tweeted stuff like “I DONT LIKE WHIT[E] PEOPLE SO I HATE WHITE SNOW” and “White women=Devil.”
Bellamy condemned Jefferson for being a slaveowner, which, if that’s our standard for not honoring someone, kind of excludes quite a few people before 1865. He also claimed that Jefferson raped his slave Sally Hemings. But I’ve reported before that DNA tests, as well as several Jefferson scholars indicate that Hemings didn’t give birth to ANY children by Jefferson.
The College Republicans at Charlottesville’s University of Virginia, the school Jefferson founded, criticized the mayor’s proposal, but I wasn’t too impressed with some of the language they used. The group called the Jefferson issue “complicated” and “complex” and said they were “dismayed” by the mayor’s proposal.
I really wanted to see them excoriate Walker, put her on blast. But the conservatives at my alma mater don’t seem to be of the fighting variety. UVA’s College Republicans rescinded its endorsement for Donald Trump after the Access Hollywood tape just a month before he won the 2016 election.
So when I left you guys last time, a petition was going around urging UVA not to accept a possible invite from Trump to the White House. The petition claimed Trump “has done all he can to stoke racial tension and embolden white supremacists,” citing Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” comment after the Charlottesville rally.
Of course, they don’t note that that comment was not about neo-Nazis, as the media would have you believe, but instead people on both sides of the Confederate statue debate. The whole petition’s based on a false premise, too: accepting an invitation to celebrate a sports win with an individual, regardless of who he is, doesn’t an endorsement of that individual’s politics.
Anyways, UVA basketball coach Tony Bennett released a statement saying “We have received inquiries about a visit to the White House. With several players either pursuing pro opportunities or moving on from UVA, it would be difficult, if not impossible to get everyone back together. We would have to respectfully decline an invitation,” reported Campus Reform.
So I’m just going to go ahead and call this what it is: hogwash. Do you really think Trump’s going to mind if a few players can’t make it — this is like cancelling class because some people are going to be absent. Just like the kiddos at Taylor University who are trying to disinvite Pence as the commencement speaker, UVA needs to realize that snubbing Trump’s not going to delegitimize the office, it’s just going to prevent individual students who may want to see the president and VP from doing so.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard that Joe Biden announced his bid for the 2020 presidency. But his announcement video was a bit peculiar in that it didn’t tell us why we should vote for Biden, but rather why orange man bad.
Biden slams Trump for the president’s “very fine people on both sides” remark, according to Campus Reform, but never actually gives the full context of that remark and it’s funny because when I was doing research for this video, I’d forgotten all about it at first, I guess because the media has so routinely omitted it in their coverage.
Trump had been referring to Confederate monument supporters/protesters, not neo-Nazis. I spoke with Matthew Nalls, a member of the University of Virginia College Republicans chapter, and he said:
“Biden’s announcement video is still a conspicuous attempt to capitalize on a tragedy in a city he has no ties to. Biden clearly did not listen to the Charlottesville community when they demanded he refrain from using the events for political purposes. Such an act is incredibly disappointing and unbecoming of any official seeking office.”
Now I’m not necessarily all about the whole “something tragic happened so therefore you must only be sad and not make any political observations that could maybe fix the problem.” It would be a bit tougher to fight radical Islam, for instance, if you couldn’t say anything after every bombing or truck attack. But here’s the thing: Biden isn’t attacking white nationalist terrorism — he’s attacking Trump. And when he’s deceitfully doing this by framing Trump’s “fine people on both sides” comment as about neo-Nazis instead of as about Confederate monument supporters, the whole thing kind of falls apart and really just resembles the campaign Hillary ran in 2016.
From “Black Lives Matter” to “all love is equal,” Democrats sure are fond of their platitudes. But they may have overlooked the aptness of one old adage: “there’s no such thing as bad press.” Billing himself as the anti-Trump instead of actually selling himself on his own merits may result in Biden just biding his time until another 2016 Dem disaster. See what I did there, fam?
