The White House revoked Jim Acosta’s press pass after a heated exchange he had with President Donald Trump, but CNN sued Trump to get it back. And now a Georgetown University law institute has filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Acosta, reported Campus Reform. Georgetown’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection said that “To dislike Acosta’s and CNN’s reporting is President Trump’s prerogative; but to retaliate against them by revoking Acosta’s White House security credentials (sometimes called a ‘hard pass’) tramples on the Constitution.”
So, the core argument here is whether Trump banned Acosta because of his viewpoint or because of his behavior. Let’s be honest: CNN and the president don’t tend to agree on a whole lot of things, but during that press conference, Jim would just…not…shut…up. It’s kind of like the difference between protest and disruption on college campuses. Acosta was arguably infringing upon the rights of other reporters by refusing to let them speak.
The Georgetown law institute said that “such retaliatory action not only harms CNN and Acosta but also aims to chill the constitutionally protected speech and newsgathering activity of other journalists whom the public depends upon to question government officials vigorously and to report candidly on the responses.”
Again, wasn’t it Acosta doing the chilling by not letting others speak? It’s a kind of cringe cliche, but the jobs vs. mobs dichotomy does seem to be at play here. One side wants to address facts and figures and have an actual discussion, whether it’s in the classroom, on social media, or in the White House. And the other side is perfectly content to throw civility out the window.
Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson compared the Betsy Ross American flag to the Nazi swastika and burning cross of the Ku Klux Klan, reported The Washington Times. Nike recently decided to scrap a shoe design featuring the flag after former NFL player Colin Kaepernick of refusing to stand for the anthem fame apparently complained about it.
So I’m a little hazy on how an American flag with fewer stars equals lynching and genocide, unless, of course, we’re supposed to trash every cultural icon before the emancipation of the slaves, so hundreds of years of American history.
We’ve discussed on Campus Unmasked the vandalism of Jefferson statues at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville’s decision this month to drop his birthday as a paid holiday, as well as a California school board’s choice to cover a mural of George Washington at a high school named after him.
It’s no longer just the Confederate statues, folks.
How many emblems are you willing to let legitimate bigots or just trolls appropriate? Two years ago, it was the OK hand, milk, and a cartoon frog — now the left is taking a bad faith swipe at the American flag.
And let’s stop with the false pretenses: the question isn’t “was Betsy Ross’s era too racist for us to use her flag?” The question is: why do we keep trying to reason with bad faith actors who are clearly using any opportunity to lash out at America and conservatives?
If you go to Georgetown University, you might find yourself paying an extra $27.20 next semester for slavery reparations, according to Campus Reform. It’s a rather odd number, but $27.20 represents the 272 slaves that the school sold in 1838 to dodge bankruptcy. Now, a reasonable person might say “alright that sucks, slavery’s wrong.” But a particularly bitter and vindictive individual might say “hey, you know what we should do? Take this out on people nearly 200 years later, who had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
Nearly 4,000 Georgetown students voted in a recent referendum and almost two-thirds of them agreed to institute a fee of $27.20 that undergraduate students would have to pay each semester. This money would go towards descendants of the slaves the school sold.
Now, the students still need to get the approval of Georgetown’s Board of Visitors to institute the fee, but Maya Moretta, one of the students promoting the reparations, said she thinks they’ll go for it. Maya also said “The Georgetown student body can be grossly apathetic and we have to beat down that apathy.”
Because when someone doesn’t agree with you, don’t try to win them over with facts or logic, no, no, beat them down. So while it’s unclear whether the board will approve the reparations fee, it’s not as though the school has previously declined atoning for the sins of people living in a time with slightly different social standards.
Georgetown said sorry for the slave sale a couple years ago, renamed buildings named after Jesuits who participated in the sale, established an African American Studies department, and openly said that descendants of slaves would receive affirmative action in the admission process.
Are you ready to pay up for a crime that you personally had nothing to do with, but maybe your great-great-grandfather did? Let me know below.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Jolly Kwanzaa? Wait a sec, isn’t that the fake one? Anyway, it’s been a crazy year here at Campus Unmasked, where I’ve brought you more than 200 stories on stuff ranging from the vandalism of a Thomas Jefferson statue on his birthday and on the campus he founded to pro-Palestinian students being a massive nuisance with disruptions and from a Dartmouth professor writing an Antifa comic book intro to bike lock professor Eric Clanton getting off with zero felony convictions. But it’s the end of the year and it’s time to hone in on the top five most insane professors of 2018. Strap yourselves in for a wild ride.
Georgia Southern University professor Jared Yates Sexton tweeted this gem of leftist doublethink in September: “Kavanaugh says he was a virgin in high school, and I’m sure, in his mind, this is saying he was naive or that he wasn’t sexual in nature, but subconsciously, this is the toxic masculinity at play. He’s saying, back then, he couldn’t have assaulted her. He wasn’t man enough.”
It’s Catch-22 all over again, folks. If Kavanaugh had committed sexual assault, he would be branded a rapist and have no chance of getting the Supreme Court confirmation. But if he didn’t, he’s exhibiting toxic masculinity, which is ALSO license to go after his livelihood, don’t you know.
Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania philosophy professor Wendy Lynne Lee called Jordan Peterson, who has a wife and kids, an “incel.” She tweeted “Jordan Peterson: incel misogynist. Committed white nationalist.” Now, after Wendy made that tweet I reached out to Peterson for his take and he said Wendy “clearly believes (1) that her ill-advised statements are warranted, which they are not, and (2) that such actions, however ill-advised, are acceptable, ethically and factually….I would counsel those who wish to bring forward such groundless accusations to be duly cautious. Such shots in the dark have a nasty habit of backfiring.”
And indeed, Very shortly after that, Peterson threatened to sue Wendy. The professor deleted her tweet calling him an incel and issued what I’m sure was a very sincere apology.
A lot of crazy stuff comes out of Rutgers University in New Jersey, but I stumbled upon a veritable gold mine in June when I reported on Professor James Livingston, who took to Facebook saying “OK, officially, I now hate white people. I am a white people” — shocker, James doesn’t teach English — “for God’s sake, but can we keep them — us — us out of my neighborhood?” The professor apparently didn’t have a good experience at his favorite restaurant and said “the place is overrun with little Caucasian assholes who know their parents will approve of anything they do. Slide around the floor, you little shithead, sing loudly, you moron. Do what you want, nobody here is gonna restrict your right to be white.”
The professor proceeded to say that he resigned from his race. Well I accept your resignation, James. But WAIT. The story gets even stranger. Rutgers first found the professor guilty of violating its discrimination and harassment policy, suggesting that his students could fear unfair treatment based on their race, but a few months later, the school reversed its ruling and James got off scot-free.
Tarrant County College professor James Mashburn apparently came into astronomy class with his face covered, refused to turn the lights on, and began talking about Islam. One student reported being concerned when she saw Mashburn moving his hand in his pocket. Police apparently didn’t find any weapons on the professor, but the school DID suspend him.
Number One. We started with a Kavanaugh story, so it only makes sense to end with one. Georgetown University professor Christine Fair responded to a video in which Senator Lindsey Graham defended Kavanaugh, saying “Look at [this] chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement. All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes.”
Well, Georgetown didn’t punish Professor Fair for that remark, but Twitter did, briefly suspending her and taking away her little blue check mark. So what do you guys think? Did I get the rankings right? Were there any I missed? Let me know in the video comments and join me for more campus craziness in 2019.